


hold on

by outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 04:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5193167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Funny, Niall thinks, that for all their success ordinary terrible things happen to them just like anybody else. Girlfriends get tired of the fans or get panicked about too much commitment, and bandmates slip going into the pool and lose five years’ worth of memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold on

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fromward (from)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/gifts), [goreallegore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreallegore/gifts).



> big thanks to the usual crew, arwa and priya, betas extraordinaire. love u guys :') title is from the eagles' 'new york minute' and the killers' 'all these things that i've done.'

Harry calls while Niall’s at the ninth hole of the green. It’s not been a bad showing today, which makes him smile. The golf club hits the ball cleanly and the ball whooshes off across the manicured grass still slick and sparkling with dew. Niall’s been real careful not to eat shit on the slippery course.

“Not bad,” Bressie comments. Niall shields his eyes to watch the ball bounce to a stop just a few hundred feet from the red flag stuck out of the hole on the other end of the course. “I mean, obviously I did better, but,” he laughs, and Niall flips him off.

His phone starts ringing, the Bond theme so recognizable that Niall almost drops into a joking crouch to sneak along a wall. Harry’s go-to move used to be acting as though he was Halle Berry striding out of the water in that gold bikini. Niall laughed every time.

“Haz,” Niall answers, his heart only a little in his throat. Only a little. “I’ve got to change your ringtone, I can’t keep imagining you trying to fit into that swimsuit. _Don’t_ suggest ‘Hello,’ either, you nutter.” It’s thoughtless, the way Niall rocks back and forth on his toes a bit, like his mood’s lifted same as his weight. He’s missed talking to Harry since hiatus started, missed his enormous head cocked interestedly and his great big eyes staring unblinkingly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry says slowly. More slowly than usual, not just his usual drawl. He sounds the way he had when he’d called Niall up to his room to tell him Zayn didn’t think he could come back. Lost, and scared. It still makes Niall furious to think of it, Zayn catching Harry alone and subjecting him to that, like. Making Harry deal with it alone, even for that long.

Niall’s stomach drops like a stone. “Harry, love. What’s the matter? Is it your mum? Is Gemma alright?”

“I…” Harry starts, stops. “No, no, everything’s fine.” He clears his throat and Niall can just picture him licking his lips thoughtfully, buying a moment of time before he tackles whatever question the interviewer’s just lobbed at him. Thinking it over before he answers Niall on what he’d like from room service. “Don’t worry.”

Bressie’s watching Niall with his brow all creased up in concern, and it makes Niall take a deep breath and stop trying to stand up so straight, like he’s waiting to take a punch.

“Gotta admit, you’re worrying me a bit,” Niall says, when Harry pauses again. “Where are you, d’you need me to come up? Did something happen in LA?” He’s mentally calculating how fast he can get to the airport, whether he’ll have to call Bas for an escort or whether he can phone airport security ahead, when Harry starts talking again.

“Just, bumped my head,” Harry says. “Nothing serious, I’m not dying.”

Niall tightens his sweaty fingers around the phone. “But?”

“Don’t really,” Harry says, his voice hitching on something halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Can’t say I remember you, actually. Erm.”

Niall’s voice comes out like a whisper, like it’s the last thing he’ll ever say. “What.”

“Slipped going into the pool, of all things,” Harry says, “or that’s where they found me, and when I woke up. Last I remember, I was in college, in the middle of English, trying to get Alice Green to look at me.”

Despite himself, because he has to, Niall laughs. “Well, you’re not much different now. Or, like. Weren’t.”

“Right, like,” Harry says again, slowing down, in a way that suddenly strikes Niall as unfamiliar. Like this time around, he’s the interviewer, and Harry’s being careful with him. Niall can’t remember the last time he thought that Harry had to think before he spoke to him. He’s been fluent in Harry mind-vomit for ages. “I tried calling my mum at first but she said to call you. Said you knew a lot about me, about where I’d been for the past few years.”

 _A lot_ , Niall thinks. _Not everything_. It feels like a betrayal, with this younger-sounding Harry on the line, his voice as thin as Niall’s ever heard it. “Yeah,” he agrees softly.

He can picture Harry ducking his head a bit, smiling the way he does when he’s nervous, soft and too beautiful to be self-conscious. “I’m in America, they say,” Harry says slowly. “I’ve heard it’s quite a nice place. Lots of hiking trails and music,” Harry adds. _I know_ , Niall wants to say. _I remember._ Do you, would you – ”

“I’ll come,” Niall spares him. He waves at Bressie, who’s turned away to give him the semblance of privacy, and totes his golf bag to the cart. He loads it up and turns the engine over, and Bressie slides behind the wheel. Niall nods back toward the clubhouse, so Bressie starts leading them away from the green, toward the nearest car to take Niall to the airport. “Takes about twelve hours. I’ll get a ticket for the next flight.”

“Really?” Harry asks. He actually sounds surprised. “You, I – my mum’s coming, and Gem too…really?” he tacks on, like he can’t quite believe it. Maybe like he wants to. “You don’t have to,” Harry adds lamely.

It makes Niall laugh. “Christ. You’re an awful liar, don’t lie to me.”

“I’m a great liar,” Harry argues, and Niall can hear him start to smile. “My mum still thinks I wasn’t the one who exploded that microwave that time.”

“You absolutely were,” Niall says confidently. “Gem was on the phone, and you decided you were big enough to make your own lunch.”

Harry goes quiet, and Niall realizes how he must’ve sounded. How Harry can catch a glancing view of all the stuff between them, like he’s sat on Bobby’s boat on Loch Siabhair. Niall had dropped a fishing lure in once and watched, helpless, as it sank to the bottom. Gone forever, just out of reach. He’d watched it the whole way down.

“We were on the tour bus,” Niall starts, and Harry stops him immediately.

“Tour bus?” he repeats, sounding confused and interested. “What, like for a band?”

Niall’s mouth goes dry. He’s so, so grateful that Bressie’s driving, because all the feeling goes out of his hands and feet, like he’s trying to unmoor himself from his own body. It takes him several tries to swallow. “I’ll explain everything. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Harry doesn’t sound much soothed. “Okay. Well, I’m not sure where I am, there must be lots of hospitals – ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Niall cuts in. “I’ll ring your personal assistant.”

“Personal assistant?” Harry repeats. It comes out close to a whine, and Niall wants, so, so bad, to smack him round the bum or pinch his cheek and get his brow unfurrowed. Make him laugh.

“Don’t worry about it,” Niall repeats. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Can’t wait,” Harry mumbles, ringing off.

***

Niall calls Louis and Liam on the plane, or tries to. They’re on some writers’ retreat to an island in the Bahamas, which Niall knows well is just their term for “pissing off for a few weeks to get massively drunk and talk about their ex-girlfriends.” Neither of them pick up. Funny, Niall thinks, that for all their success ordinary terrible things happen to them just like anybody else. Girlfriends get tired of the fans or get panicked about too much commitment, and bandmates slip going into the pool and lose five years’ worth of memories.

Niall catches himself drumming his fingers agitatedly on the hand rest, and he curls his hand into a fist, grateful that he hadn’t let Bressie come along like he’d asked. Bressie had had work to do, and Niall knew that, like. Well, he’d known that he’d wanted to pick at himself a bit where no one could see.

He can’t get the sound of Harry’s voice out of his head, a voice like he hadn’t known it for years. The same slow drawl, so much more heavily accented, like a ghost speaking out of his past. Of Harry’s past. Their shared past, he supposes, there’s not much difference now. Or was.

Niall closes his eyes and tips his head back against the headrest, breathing recycled airplane air. He thinks about jotting down the flight number and starting the stopwatch app on his phone to add to his spreadsheet later, but he finds himself not wanting to. Like once he marks this flight down it’ll all be real, and he’ll have to – once the flight’s over, he’ll have to get off the plane and take a car to the hospital Harry’s at and meet his best friend for the first time. Again.

Niall’s stomach churns uncomfortably, and he unfolds the tray table, makes a pillow of his arms, and tries to make himself sleep.

In spite of himself, he adds this flight to his notes app and starts the stopwatch before he dozes off. _Someone has to remember it all_ , he remembers telling Zayn once, when Zayn had caught him at it.

For the first time, he sort of wishes that person wasn’t him.

***

Anne’s deep in conversation with a doctor in a white lab coat when the elevator dings and the doors open on Harry’s floor. Niall almost falls out, he’s so happy to see her. It’s a bit like she’s his own mum, the way he rushes toward her like the last wave out of a storm. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses the side of his head, and Niall closes his eyes. This, at least, is familiar.

The doctor quietly excuses himself and Anne holds Niall out at shoulder-length. “Are you alright?” she asks, looking him over.

Niall knows he looks fine; he’d checked himself out in the reflective stainless steel elevator doors, a security guard watching stone-faced over his shoulder. He’d buzzed his hair when the band went on hiatus to get rid of the blond, and it’s finally starting to grow back a bit. His eyes aren’t bloodshot, thanks to the eye drops he begged off the security guard, and there’s not any food caught in his teeth. Christ, when he’d had braces, that had been a constant struggle.

Niall swallows and nods quickly, and Anne just frowns a bit, unconvinced.

“How is he?” Niall asks. “I mean, he sounded – does he look – is – ” He makes himself stop and take a breath. “He’s the same?”

Anne’s eyes flash, and Niall’s heart starts climbing up his throat. He stands up straighter, sliding his hands out of sight, into his pockets. Her eyes do the same no bullshit thing Harry’s do when he’s decided to speak up instead of rolling with Louis’s or Liam’s decisions. _You gotta roll with the changes,_ Niall remembers Harry crooning at him when Niall had asked, smiling like he wasn’t bothered at all.

“He’s still Harry. We’re pretty sure he’s caught up to about 2010, because he remembers starting college, but –  ”

“But he doesn’t remember X-Factor,” Niall says. It comes out of him like a rush, like a confession.

Anne reaches up and pats Niall’s cheek, which is confirmation enough.

“Okay,” Niall just says. He can see his father in his mind’s eye, hands clenched at his sides while Maura told him she didn’t think they should stay together any longer. Niall had peeked around the corner into the kitchen to see, his father framed in the doorway, his face unreadable. He hadn’t argued, either. That’s the way he’s feeling now. He licks his lips, nods, and follows Anne’s gesture into Harry’s hospital room.

“Wow, you’re really fit,” are the first words out of Harry’s mouth when he sees Niall.

It makes Niall draw up short, for some reason. He hesitates, rocking on his heels, and Harry cracks a beaming smile. “Sorry,” he drawls unconvincingly, and Niall laughs, rounds his bed and pulls up an uncomfortable hospital chair closer to Harry’s bedside. Gemma’s already sat beside him, reaches over and pats his hand when Niall sits down. Harry tracks him the whole way, his pupils blown wide.

Niall folds his hands together, his elbows on his knees. “Christ, you’re totally off your head right now, aren’t you?”

“Like when I had my wisdom teeth removed,” Harry confirms, his hand twitching at his side. Niall thinks of sharing a joint with him on a yacht in Miami, Harry’s eyes blown out like this, a lazy grin scrawled across his babyish face. Celebrating the end of a tour Harry doesn’t remember going on.

“Right,” he murmurs.

Harry’s got a wealth of bruises on one side of his face, disappearing into his hairline. A gash held together by butterfly stitches cuts through his left eyebrow. The purple bruises make his eyes look very green, but it’s the way that he holds himself that makes Niall reach for the morphine pump feeding into Harry’s arm.

Harry protests weakly, “Hey,” and Niall shushes him.

Rolling his eyes, Niall says, “Trust me, you look like you need it,” and Harry goes still against the sheets. He glances up at his mum, who’s leaning against the doorway, watching them.

Checking with her, Niall realizes. Because he _doesn’t_ trust him. Harry doesn’t know him. His stomach squeezes up tight again, and he drops the IV tube, squeezing his palms together between his thighs.

The morphine kicks in quick, though, and Harry settles back against his pillows, his eyes glazed. “‘M Harry, by the way,” Harry says softly.

“I know,” Niall says, even though he knows it’s a cruelty. It comes out of him before he can catch it, like cursing on live radio, and he instantly feels guilty. “I’m Niall. Horan.”

Harry looks at him imploringly, like he’s asking Niall to explain what, exactly, he is to him. The words jam up in Niall’s throat, there’s so many of them. “You’re my best friend,” Niall settles for, and Harry looks pleased, his mouth curling up like the Cheshire cat’s. It makes Niall smile despite himself, because he looks so young and mischievous. _I’ve seen this before,_ Niall wants to say. _I know exactly what you’re trying to do._ It doesn’t stop him from leaning back to get his phone out of his pocket.

Niall keeps the camera low when he pulls it out, but Harry doesn’t flinch away from the lens like Niall expects, and it gives him pause for a moment. He knows that soft, putty-like face and those eyes, but they don’t know him, and they don’t know five years’ worth of invasive paparazzi pictures. Niall clears his throat and thumbs through his camera roll.

“What is that?” Harry all but slurs. “‘S that a Sidekick?”

Niall laughs out loud. “Jesus, no. It’s an iPhone.”

“What, like an iPod?” Harry drawls. “What” sounds like “wot” and Niall rolls his eyes, thrusting the phone in Harry’s face.

“Proof,” Niall offers, showing Harry the picture of Harry with his arms around Niall’s da, his eyes all crinkled up in a smile. They’d both been such sappy drunks after that last show in Sheffield, chorusing “Act My Age” until Louis started pelting them with Halloween candy.

Harry looks nonplussed. “Who’s it?” he asks blearily, his eyes at half mast.

“My old man,” Niall answers, swallowing hard. He’d forgotten – silly, but he’d forgotten for a moment that Harry would’ve forgotten Bobby and Maura too, forgotten them all – and his fingertips go numb.

“You look like him,” Harry says softly, his eyes slipping shut.

“Don’t start with that,” Niall laughs, but Harry doesn’t get the joke, and he’s asleep now, anyway.

Gemma puts her hand on Niall’s shoulder, and he starts. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes him tight for a moment. Niall takes a few deep breaths, watching Harry slump into the pillows, his mouth ever-so-slightly open as he sleeps.

He’s always looked younger when his brow’s not furrowed in his sleep, but at least he looks like the Harry that Niall knows. That he grew up with. It’d be such a violation, but Niall’s fingers itch to take a picture, just so that. Just so that he can have it, maybe. So that he’ll know it was real, even if Harry doesn’t remember that it was.

“‘M gonna try giving Lou and Leemo a ring,” Niall tells the room, standing up. Anne takes his seat at Harry’s bedside. Gemma’s hair is long and dark again, Niall notices when he glances back, as though it’d never been that lovely shade of violet. Niall remembers Harry asking them to squeeze into those narrow storage spaces for a picture, him and Gem and Lou and Harry, while Paul took the picture, and it makes him take a deep breath.

There’s a question he knows he has to ask, but he doesn’t want to. So he pretends not to be aware of it, busies himself ringing Liam again. He dials his work number just in case they actually are doing work, but of course Liam doesn’t pick up, so Niall dials his party number instead.

They all have dummy phones they take out on nights out and phones that have their work contacts on them and phones for their friends and family, except Niall, who has it all in one place. He’s hands-down One Direction’s biggest security risk, but it’s best all kept together, he’d thought. Like, in case someone else lost one of their phones, he’d have most of it to reconstruct with. Christ, but he hadn’t known he was preparing for this.

“Yello!” Louis answers Liam’s phone mid-laugh. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

The words stick in Niall’s throat. “Everything’s okay,” he starts, and he can hear the background of Louis’s call go quieter as he picks up on the tone of Niall’s voice.

“Everything’s alright?” Louis repeats tightly. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, Lou,” Niall promises. “Um. I’m in LA,” he starts slowly, “because Harry slipped going into the pool.”

Louis laughs. “Idiot.”

“Yeah,” Niall agrees, snorting. He thinks of the dark bruises obscuring half of Harry’s face, Harry smiling at him like he was someone he had to charm. “Eh. He, uh. Well, it was hard enough that he’s got a spot of memory trouble.”

Louis doesn’t understand at first, and Niall closes his eyes and leans against the wall in the hallway for support. Ugh, but this is why he’d called Louis, of course. Once he’s done this one he’s finished, and Louis will handle the rest. Calling Sony and management.

Christ, but Harry’s been collaborating with artists over his solo project, and Niall doesn’t even know who. It finally sinks in that Niall could be here for a while, helping Harry sort his life out, and the practical part of him starts thinking of hotels to stay at, shops to get new gear from while Willie has his bag flown to him from London.

“Nialler?” Louis prompts him softly, when Niall’s been quiet for too long, his chest as tight as if he’s having anxiety.

“It’s all gone, Louis,” Niall blurts. “The past five years. All of it, even the X-Factor. He doesn’t know who we are.”

Louis is quiet for so, so long. Niall thinks about saying something to break up the silence but he’s not sure what to say that wouldn’t sound hollow or meaningless or worse, petty. Like those years didn’t matter. He bites his lip hard, looking down at the toes of his golf shoes. His golfing trousers are wrinkled from him sitting in them for the better part of a day, and he could use a shower and a shave. Niall swallows.

Finally, Louis says, “Shall we come over, then?”

Niall’s already shaking his head. “I don’t want to overwhelm him.” He remembers Harry bouncing around bootcamp, shaking that ridiculous mane of hair, flirting with Caroline. He remembers Harry curling up tight into a ball at the end of the day, just his feet poking out of the bottom of his blanket as he murmured slowly into the phone to his mum.

“We’re here,” Louis says tightly, like it’s everything he can do not to come running. Niall appreciates how much he must trust him not to. “If you need us, you call. Alright, lad?”

“Lad,” Niall repeats, chuckling. He hangs his head, feeling like there’s a bowling ball sat in the middle of his chest. “I love you, you know,” he tells Louis. Because he can, and because Louis loves him back, and he remembers loving him.

Louis breathes slow and deep, deliberate. Thoughtful. Niall wanders down the hallway a bit, half-thinking of the Beverly Wilshire for his stay, having clothes delivered. That’d work better. He can do that. “He loves you too,” Louis finally settles for saying. “He’ll remember.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Niall asks, his breath whistling through his teeth. No one – it feels silly, but it makes Niall’s heart ache in his chest – but Harry was the one he spent those long nights in hotels with, trying to get through the night, the fans’ constant screams like some kind of distorted dream. Trying local restaurants all over the world, talking about Ireland and his family and the first verse of “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” presented to him like a gift, like the guitar Niall doesn’t play enough. And if Harry doesn’t remember them, then it’s just Niall, and it’s like they might not have happened at all.

“Don’t,” Louis says swiftly. “Don’t go there yet. Have you asked the doctor yet?”

“I will,” Niall says miserably. He doesn’t know why he’s so sure the doctor won’t have good news. Like, his luck’s been too good for too long, and now he has to pay it back. Pay for it.

In the background of Louis’s call, Niall can hear his mates calling for another round, the music cranking up again. “Niall – ”

“I’ll keep you updated,” Niall cuts him off. “Talk to you later, Louis.” He ends the call.

Then he starts making arrangements for a hotel room, security, and clothes. One thing at a time, Niall thinks. He takes a deep breath, and gets on with it.

***

Niall’s not sure if it’s because it’s Harry, if it’s because this is a private hospital, or if it’s because the nurses just like him, but no one comes to kick him out long after visiting hours are over. Anne and Gemma went back to Harry’s to shower and rest, so Niall’s been showing Harry the card game they made up back on the Take Me Home tour just to battle the boredom of days on the bus. Harry’s got one card stuck to his forehead and two between his fingers like claws when Niall slaps down the Ace of Spades and howls, “Yahtzee!”

Harry laughs out loud. “That’s not fair!” he says. “I only just learned the rules. Let’s go again.”

“Christ,” Niall laughs, remembering Harry saying the very same thing to him years ago, before the game got way too boring to keep playing all the time. Niall reaches over and flips to the music app on his phone, queuing up Rumours.

“This is nice,” Harry says, while Niall’s dealing him a new hand. “This album, I mean. Who sings it?”

Niall takes a deep, deep breath. “Fleetwood Mac,” he answers, and it sounds alright.

“Huh,” says Harry. “My dad likes them, I think. ‘S good, I like it.”

“Thought you might,” Niall merely says, his voice only a little tight.

He stays at Harry’s bedside until he keels over while Harry very slowly and laboriously deals him a new hand. He curls up sideways over Harry’s legs, and Harry merely pats his cheek, folding back his quilt so that Niall’s covered. Niall protests groggily, and Harry pulls the sheet over himself, offering him a conciliatory smile.

It’s not a bad night’s sleep, all things considered, Christie McVie singing about love the backing track to his dreams. Not too bad at all. Just different.

***

“Retrograde amnesia,” Harry’s doctor says the next day, when Niall and Gemma and Anne are gathered around Harry’s bedside again. He’s far less drugged today, and he looks proper miserable, his face like a cat that’d fallen into the tub. “That means that he can’t remember the past. Anterograde amnesia means that he’d have trouble remembering things that had happened since the accident.”

Niall fusses with the hole in his knee of his jeans. They’re new and haven’t been washed yet, so the denim is stiff with dye and cuts into the backs of his knees. “Are you saying he has both?” Niall asks, confused.

Harry’s eyes lit up with recognition when Niall walked into his hospital room this morning, and Niall’s heart had lurched so. But Harry’d merely said, “The Irish bloke!” looking him over appreciatively.

“Probably not,” the doctor shrugs. “But maybe. We probably won’t notice for a while, so try and test his memory as often as possible. Prompting him to remember may trigger a return of memories, and help him ingrain new memories.”

Niall studies the tips of his new Converse. They’re not nearly scuffed enough, he thinks, remembering Louis jumping on his own trainers so that they wouldn’t look so new. Trashing them on purpose. Making them more authentic, like. Although maybe it’s less authentic to engineer something like that.

Gemma asks the hardest question. “And his memories, they’ll come back?”

“I…don’t know,” the doctor answers, shrugging his narrow shoulders helplessly. “Physically speaking, he’s well. There are parts of the brain we still don’t quite understand, and memory is one of them.”

“How, like…” Niall speaks up, his voice hoarser than he expects. “How long until we’d know, like. If they were ever coming back. Weeks? Months?”

Again, the doctor merely shrugs. His coat is almost blindingly white, and his neatly trimmed dark hair doesn’t move when he tilts his head, looking for the right words. “We can only hope,” he answers finally, offering them an apologetic smile.

Harry’s meant to be discharged just before dinner, so Niall calls Cal and Phil to talk logistics. Their head of security’s working for some up and coming R&B act now, but Niall’s still prefers a familiar face. Plus, maybe something about them will trigger Harry’s memory.

He’s tracing the wood grain of Harry’s nightstand with his fingernail when Harry bursts out of the bathroom, his voice high and loud. “Bloody hell!” he shouts. He’s stark naked.

Gemma squeaks and covers her face, and Anne cringes, her face pulling into a pained smile. “Yes, dear?”

“Look at me!” Harry shouts, which is kind of unnecessary, because everybody in the room, including his nurse, is looking at him. “I’m covered in tattoos! How did you let this happen?” he asks his mother despairingly. “I look like a Doodle Bear.”

Niall bursts out laughing, and Harry’s eyes settle on him, softening at the edges. Niall wipes at his wet eyes, surprised that a few tears leaked out. “Jesus. I’ve been telling you that for years.”

Harry looks down at himself, the birds on his chest and the butterfly and the mermaid and the giant tat on his thigh. “Well, did I have a good reason for them?”

“Baby brother, can you please put some clothes on?” Gemma asks weakly, hiding her face behind her hands.

“Only if I must,” Harry sighs, and it’s so – so him that Niall feels better. Soothed, like. He dresses in the clothes that his assistant sent from his house in LA, a pair of ripped skinny jeans and his favorite Rolling Stones t-shirt with the tear in the side. Harry comes out of the loo in his pants, brandishing the jeans like they’ve offended him. “These are Gemma’s jeans, right?” he asks. “They won’t fit me.”

Niall recognizes that pair from…where was it? Oh, yeah, the Sunshine Children event. “They stretch,” he offers. They’d felt soft when Niall pinched his bum for grabbing Niall’s arse, and he can almost smell them from where he’s leaned up against the window, Harry’s flowery detergent and his cologne and that sticky gel Lou puts in his hair to keep it from being so curly. Harry shoots him an odd look, then he huffs, his face going back to pure pout.

“I just don’t think it’s fair,” Harry starts, “because you’ve got great legs, and I – ”

“You go jogging all the time,” Niall says dryly. “Usually at four a.m., it used to drive our security crazy.”

Harry stops trying to pull the jeans up his thighs without pulling the hem of his jeans over his feet, first. Niall’s going to let him figure that one out on his own. It’s too amusing not to. “Security,” Harry repeats thoughtfully. “That’s who you were on the phone with, too, right?”

Niall swallows. They’ve not broached this subject yet, Niall or his mum or Gemma. It’s kind of hard to tell someone they’re a massively famous popstar; it feels harder to tell him that he’s lost the band that made him famous without ever knowing it. At least, that’s what Niall tells himself every time Harry asks what he’s been doing for five years.

He waits for Gemma or Anne to answer first, but of course that’s why they called him. “You remember that show the X-Factor, yeah?”

“The singing one?” Harry asks, his face turning shier. “Yeah, I was…well, had thought of trying out, maybe, when I was old enough.”

“You got in,” Niall tells him slowly, watching Harry’s expression change.

He lights up, a wide smile spreading over his face. “Yeah? Did I, um, win?”

“You, uh. Actually,” Niall thinks aloud. “Most of it will be online. You should just watch it.”

“Made me famous, though,” Harry observes astutely. “That’s what security is for, right?”

“Us,” Niall corrects him softly. “Made us famous. And yeah. They’re good lads, though. You liked – you’ll like them.” Harry starts absently trying to pull his jeans up again, so Niall pushes him over so that he flops on the bed.

Harry squawks in surprise, his voice edged in laughter. “Hey! Head injury, here.”

Niall tugs the hem of Harry’s skinny jeans over his big-ass feet so that Harry can finally pull them the rest of the way up his legs. Harry pushes himself up so that he’s sitting, and, just.

“So,” Niall starts softly, “We’re going to let you be photographed leaving the hospital so everyone knows you’re alright. Nobody knows about the, uh. Memory thing yet.”

“And then Gemma and I will stay with you for a bit while you get readjusted,” Anne adds.

Harry looks between them, his eyes wide and very green. “Wait…but…”

“You’ve got a place in London,” Niall volunteers, even though he knows it’ll probably hurt more than it’ll help. “But, uh. You’ve been out of the house since you were sixteen.”

“I…” Harry looks at his mum, and it’s not betrayal on his face. He looks excited but he also looks daunted, and Niall remembers that. Moving to London on his own when he wasn’t much older than Harry feels now. It’s not fear, exactly, or strictly anticipation. A combination of both. Like looking down at the top of a rollercoaster hill, seeing what’s ahead and running straight at it. ‘Cept that’s not quite the case for Harry, who’s just going to have to grow up, again. Unless he remembers.

Suddenly, intensely, Niall wants to pack Harry up and fly him back to Ireland with him. Take him on that roadtrip Niall had been planning with Eoghan and the rest of the lads, just cruise around the Irish coast. Pints at the pub every night, the Irish coast their constant companion, the waves like the crash of the cymbal in a great rock song. Have a bonfire, play the guitar. Maybe learn the harmonica.

First things first. Niall helps Harry get back on his feet, and then Harry pulls the jeans over his narrow hips. “What happened here?” Harry asks, fingering the rip in his shirt.

“Got caught on a doorknob,” Niall snorts. “You and these vintage T-shirts.” He pokes Harry in the side, his skin as soft and the muscles in his stomach as firm as Niall remembers.

Niall’s phone starts buzzing, so he steps back to slide his phone out of his pocket. Harry goes over to his mum, who smooths his wild hair back from his face, clucking tenderly.

“Security’s here,” Niall announces, ending the call. “We can go downstairs.”

The closer they get to the doors, they louder the rumbling gets, like a storm rushing up over the horizon in the middle of a scrimmage footie game. It’s always so unfair, like the moment you notice the storm it has to open up the sky and dump all that rain down at once. Niall remembers slipping and sliding on his feet on the way home from the pitch, dislocating his knee more than once on days like those.

Phil’s waiting for them at the elevator doors. Niall grins and pulls him into a hug, Phil comfortingly warm. Like Sarah’s blue tablecloth, he reminds Niall of good days. Phil turns to Harry, smiling, and Niall cuts in with an introduction. “This is one of our security guards. One of your regulars,” he says softly.

Phil’s eyes are only a little pained when Harry politely shakes his hand, smiling wide. “Can’t say I’ve ever had a bodyguard before,” Harry muses, studying Phil. “Are you all so fit?”

“He’s been like that,” Niall sighs, when Phil looks surprised. “Randy as a teenager, honestly.”

“Hey!” Harry squawks, tilting his head so that he’s resting it on his sister’s shoulder. “I’m subtler than that.”

Gemma wraps her arm around his shoulders and kisses the top of his head. “Dear brother, you are about as subtle as a neon sign.”

“Let’s go,” Phil leads them. Niall’s just behind him, Harry sandwiched between his mum and his sister.

“What’s that sound?” Harry asks curiously. He watches Niall pull an especially thick pair of Ray-Bans from an inner pocket of his coat. Niall hands a pair to Harry, who automatically pushes them to the top of his head, trying to keep his hair out of his face.

Niall figures it’s best to let him find out on his own. “Just don’t listen to what they’re saying,” he advises him, “and don’t lose track of me, if you can help it.”

The moment the doors swing open and Phil and the rest of their security fan out around them, Harry reaches for Niall’s hand. Their fingers slot together, and Niall keeps his eyes trained down on the ground as the crowd of paps and fans crush in, their voices too loud.

He concentrates on Harry’s hand in his, and his charity match, and Harry trying to get Niall to hold his hand all day long. He’d bet that one goal on it, that if he made it Niall had to hold his hand for the rest of the day. That’d been such a good day, he thinks, and then security moves aside to let them into a Range Rover.

Harry piles into the backseat, Gemma falling into the car beside Niall as the doors shut quickly and the car rumbles away from the hospital before any of them get their seat belts on.

“That was amazing,” Harry voices, peeking over the top of the seat. Niall reaches around and shoves him back in the seat so that he’ll buckle his damn self up before he has another accident. “They were all there for me, were they? They were all asking about a solo album, and a hiatus? Am I recording an album right now? I’m, like, a proper popstar. Am I a popstar?” Harry babbles quickly, as fast as he ever talks, his eyes so bright.

Niall slumps against the seat. “Oh, yeah,” he answers.

“People really love me,” Harry observes, peering out of the rear window now, at the crowd and the paps who attempted to follow them. Niall knows there will be shots of them inside this car and outside the hospital all over newspapers and magazines and the Internet by tomorrow, if not sooner.

“Yeah,” Niall merely mumbles again, closing his eyes. “‘S like this all the time.”

“Wow,” Harry breathes, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile.

 ***

 Harry lets out a long, low whistle when the car pulls up to his house. It is a proper mansion, Niall thinks, looking it over. ‘Course, the exterior’s got nothing on the interior, which he knows Harry’s had trapped in development hell for ages. Last he’d heard from Harry’s mum, he’d finally moved a few of his things into it, although Niall’s not so sure he’s actually been living there. He’s always thought Harry lived with Cal or Ben or Jeff on his LA stays, although – although things aren’t quite the same, with them not in the band anymore. Not since Harry’s got the chance to proper stay.

“This is my house?” Harry asks disbelievingly, sat struck in the car while Phil unclips his seatbelt and slides out of his seat, rounding the boot for Harry’s bag. “Do I have a dog?”

“Haven’t had time for one before,” Niall points out, reaching into the backseat to unbuckle Harry’s for him, get him moving. “Suppose you could, now.”

Harry just hums, almost unable to keep his eyes off the sparkling windows and sandstones. It does look a proper mansion, LA-style. Niall likes it, sort of; he’s always thought the air smells funny in LA, and the lights are all wrong, like the sun’s got a bit of a neon glare, and it’s as far away from Ireland as he’d like to be without going all the way to Australia.

Anne loops her arms through her son’s and they lead Harry up to the front door. “I haven’t got – ” he realizes, fumbling in his pocket for the keys.

“Got it here,” Phil says, passing it over. It’s just a little key, like would belong to any house, even a little two-bedroom like the house Niall grew up in. Funny, that. Some things stay small. Harry wiggles the key into the lock, bending his head down, and his curls fall in front of his face. He looks so much like himself, like the Harry that Niall knows, that Niall’s reaching out and touching his sleeve before he can help it.

Harry looks up at him with wide green eyes, confused, and Niall tears his hand away, ducking his head. His ears feel like they’re on fire.

Once inside, Anne goes to make them all tea while Harry looks around his own house. None of them thought it quite right to give him a tour to his own place, although Gemma goes along to keep him company.

“Don’t know how much use I can be,” Niall admits to Anne, when he’s sure Phil’s driven off in his battered Jeep and Harry and Gemma are busy arguing over which master bedroom is Harry’s, his ridiculous shirts filling up every closet. “Never even been to this house before.” He’s itching to poke around, but he wants to do it – not secretly, like a criminal, but on his own. When he can look on undisturbed.

Anne clucks her tongue, putting the kettle on the hob and turning on the burner. Niall grew up with a gas range and he’s always a little tense right before the flame flares up and settles back down again, like there might’ve been a natural gas leak. All these years, and he’s still afraid of that. “You’re a comfort just by being here,” Anne says, always so cuttingly heartfelt. Niall’s throat feels a tiny bit tight.

“He doesn’t even know me,” Niall mutters, folding his hands together. He presses his fingertips into the soft spaces between his knuckles, watching the bones shift under the surface of his skin.

Anne chuckles. “Well, if not to him, then to me. You know I love you like a son of my own.”

“Stepson,” Niall points out, starting to smile.

“Son-in-law,” Anne snorts, smiling hard. “Not that I don’t like your father, of course. Only, I wouldn’t do that to Maura.”

“Nor to Robin, rightly so,” Niall sighs, hooking his foot around the barstool when he climbs up and settles down, slumping a bit onto the marble surface of Harry’s counter.

Niall watches Anne unearth a loaf of bread from Harry’s pantry and pop a couple of slices into the toaster while she searches for something more substantial to eat. She’s serving the tea when Harry and Gemma return from their tour of Harry’s house, their faces a little green.

“My blood’s still on the tile outside,” Harry says, slumping into the seat next to Niall. Gemma slots into the chair on his other side, rolling her eyes.

She says, “I’m telling you, little brother, that’s not blood. It smells like those maraschino cherry cocktails you drink.”

Harry picks his head up off the counter. “Oh,” he hums, surprised. “I’d forgotten. I’m old enough to drink, are I?”

Anne slaps the back of his hand, lightly, with the butter knife before she lathers butter all over the toast. Niall sips on his tea, not surprised that Anne remembered just how he likes it. “I don’t think so, young man.”

“I feel…different,” Harry volunteers, shifting in his seat a bit. He sits up straighter, and Niall has to smother the urge to reach out and roll the heel of his hand over Harry’s lower back, where he’s always sore. “Like, taller, and older. I don’t feel sixteen, exactly.”

Niall props his head up on his hand and watches Harry try to sort himself out. He’s always looked a bit like he’s aging in parts, first his big feet and then his arms and legs, his hips soft no matter how much jogging and boxing he did. His face is still soft, too, although sometimes the light’s just right and he looks cut, angular, in a way that Niall once thought belonged entirely to Zayn.

His eyes catch on Harry’s wrist, right around the corner of his knobbly wrist bone, where he’d gotten that tiny “99p” tattooed. Niall thinks he remembers Harry saying that Ed did it, or maybe it’d been Zayn. He thinks about trying to explain to this Harry that he’d gotten a dumbass tattoo for a bloke he doesn’t even remember, and he has to rub his palms over his face.

“I’m hungry,” Niall says, when he pulls his hands away from his face to find Anne looking at him with concern.

“Let’s order a pizza,” Harry suggests quickly. He doesn’t eat gluten anymore, or unprocessed foods. He does now, Niall corrects himself.

He nudges Harry’s foot with the toe of his trainer. “Comes with cheese-stuffed crust now.”

“Really?” Harry’s eyes go wide. He smiles brilliantly, and Niall smiles back. “The future is amazing. Are there hoverboards yet?”

“If you know a bloke,” Niall trails off, shrugging, and Harry laughs.

***

Niall finds Harry in the kitchen the next morning, when Niall’s come over to help him with his work phone and credit cards. The counter has a smattering of flour and sugar on it, and Harry’s wooden rolling pin is off to the side, tiny bits of dough stuck to the side.

“You’re baking?” Niall says. He doesn’t know why it comes out like a question, but it does.

Harry nods, his hair flopping over is face. “I’m making bread,” he says. He stops kneading the bread to look up at Niall. “Just wanted something familiar, like.”

“You used to do this every weekend,” Niall remembers. Jesus, Harry never shut up about “I used to work in a bakery.”

Nodding again, Harry says, “Yeah. I think – well, thought, I guess – if the music stuff hadn’t worked out, I’d have liked to have keep working there.”

“Till when?” Niall asks.

“Till…dunno,” Harry laughs. “Didn’t know the band stuff was going to work out.”

Harry drapes a damp cloth over the dough, and then he and Niall go on the search for Harry’s work phone.

“I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Harry complains. Niall can just about see Harry’s green eyes peering at him through the darkness, his eyes crinkling up a bit when he catches Niall’s eyes. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Niall snorts, sitting back on his heels. Harry copies him, peeping over the top of the bed. “It’s a phone, Harold. Looks like this,” he takes his own phone out of his pocket and shows Harry. “Yours was silver, I think. It has all your work contacts on.”

“Then why isn’t it someplace, like,” Harry drawls, his hands moving slowly through the air, like sparklers someone’s forgotten to light, “not under the bed?”

Niall laughs. “I dunno, Harry. It’s you. Where d’you think you put it?”

“Do you speak Irish?” Harry asks, instead of answering.

“Oh, not this again,” Niall mutters. He can’t stop his lips twitching with a smile. “First time you met me, you were all over me about it, too. Sure look it,” Niall grins, “ _An nì chì na big, ‘s e nì na big_.”

Harry’s eyes go wide as saucers. “What did that mean?”

“You’d have to ask my nan,” Niall snickers, pushing himself up. His knee creaks almost audibly, and he lets out a little hissing breath, holding very still until it passes.

Harry rounds the bed to him. “Are you alright?”

"Just an old war wound,” Niall jokes, thinking of the battlefield of the stage in the eyes of their fans. He’ll never quite understand the instinct for lobbing artillery of half-eaten hotdogs, cookies, sandwiches, and glo-sticks at them. He’ll never quite understand Harry eating some of the crap he picked up off stage, either. Niall snorts thinking of it, mussing Harry’s hair as he passes him, and Harry ducks into Niall’s side like he’s cold.

“What do I even need a work phone for?” Harry asks. “No one’s explained what it is I even do.”

“You’re a popstar,” Niall answers, stooping to check under a planter for Harry’s phone. He’s such a cad about losing it all over hotels and the bus, always was, setting it down to arrange photos and forgetting to pocket it again. Said he preferred using the work phone for that type of stuff because a leak of his photos would’ve been Instagram gold, thank you very much. “Go to parties and premieres, sometimes do a show, that sort of thing.”

Harry’s quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure I’m a good enough singer,” he admits quietly, while Niall’s bent over to peer under the coffee table Harry’s got in his hallway with the fancy Spanish tiles on.

Niall groans and perches on the edge of the coffee table, giving his knee a rest. Harry looks down at him, biting his lip with an uncharacteristically vulnerable look on his face. Niall can’t remember the last time Harry said something like that.

It’d been natural, the way he took over more of the bands’ vocals, the music falling to Niall while Liam and Louis put their heads together to write. It’d been – well, if the band was to go on, Niall would be okay with that arrangement, mostly. Even if Harry was always asking him to do the first verse on his songs, said it wasn’t a sure thing until Niall christened it.

This is an easy problem to solve, though. Niall temporarily abandons the search for Harry’s goddamn work phone and leads Harry back to the kitchen, where he plugs his phone into the iHome port. The soft notes of “Hey Angel” start playing, Harry’s own growl echoing throughout the house.

It takes him a long moment to get it, and when he does, he squeaks. “This is _me?_ ”

Niall nods until Louis’s bit comes up, then, “This is Louis, he was in the band with us.”

Harry stands stock-still and listens to the whole song, his face slowly giving way to a smile. Niall leaves him to hear his own vocals and stops at the loo to wash his face. He’s not been sleeping so well, and he could use a splash of cold water. He grips the edge of the counter, studying his own reflection.

Still baby-faced, he thinks, although he’s got more stubble than Harry. His blue eyes are a tiny bit bloodshot, although flying does that to him. He looks alright, Niall thinks, a little surprised. Like his body’s not unaccustomed to days without proper rest.

Funny, how easy it’d been to get used to the steady days of rest he’d been getting in London. Up mid-morning for tea and toast, a round of golf or a jam session with his mates, maybe a workout, cook lunch, make a call round someone’s house down to the pub for drinks and chips. He’s lost weight since Mark’s not been around, and his knee’s stiffening up a little. He doesn’t look like a popstar. He just looks like Niall.

Niall takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. He checks his buzzing phone, and Eoghan’s texted with pictures of a battered lime green van. _For the roadtrip, eh?_ he’s sent, along with the emoji with its tongue out. Swallowing, Niall pockets his phone without responding and steps out of the loo.

Quite suddenly, he knows where Harry’s left his phone. “End of the Day” is playing when Niall crosses Harry’s spacious living room, headed for his bedroom. Harry catches up to him when Niall’s half-buried in Harry’s closet, rummaging among his coats.

“Whose are these?” Harry asks, fingering the knee-length leopard print coat. Niall stops poking around coat pockets to help Harry get it off the hanger, holding the coat up for Harry to slide his arms into.

“Was I an eccentric millionaire, then?” Harry asks. “Like Gene Simmons?”

Niall laughs. “No. You were just…very you. Or who you were then,” he adds quietly.

“I like it,” Harry says softly, like he knows what Niall’s thinking. Niall flattens the collar against Harry’s chest, surprised that Harry hadn’t taken off his old cross necklace. His hand brushes something square and hard in Harry’s pocket, and Niall slips his fingers in and pulls out a silver iPhone. “Success!” crows Harry, breaking into some kind of weird victory dance. Because it’s habit, Niall joins in, “What a Feeling” echoing around them. “What was that move?” Harry laughs.

Niall drops his arms slowly. “Ah,” he bites his lip. Both of them fall silent, and it’s not easy and restful. It kind of hurts.

“I know you know me,” Harry starts, running his fingers over his own fur coat, “like, better than anyone. That’s why my mum had me call you. And, like,” he pauses, pursing his lips while he looks for the best word. Niall’s heart is in his throat, this Harry is so like the one he knew, more mature than the Harry Niall remembers from boot camp. “Just, like, I appreciate you coming. But if it’s too hard for you. You don’t have to stay.”

Niall clears his throat. “What makes you think it’s hard for me?”

“You smile when everyone’s looking,” Harry answers. “Not so much when they look away.”

“You saw,” Niall points out, unable to stop himself from chewing at his cuticle.

“I’m not everyone to you,” Harry points out, his voice soft, his eyes clear as glass and totally unreadable. Harry smiles brilliantly. “Anyway. There’s a ping-pong table in the upstairs game room, what say we give it a whirl?”

Just a few moments later, Harry’s groaning with a smile, “How are you so good at this?”

“Lotta practice,” Niall points out.

“Well, it’s not fair,” says Harry. “Come play doubles with me, we’ll tear Gemma and my mum apart.”

Niall thinks of Gemma playing with them all the time on the Asian leg of the last tour and Anne’s extensive tennis practice as a player in college, and then he shrugs. He could use the competition.

They stop playing when Gemma has Niall in a headlock and Anne fires off a shot directly at her son’s bruised forehead, her face instantly falling into a look of regret. Harry plays it up for the sympathy vote, and Niall kicks his own teammate in the shin, rolling his eyes. Harry smiles wide.

“Okay,” Niall says, drawing up a rolling chair to the computer monitor in Harry’s office after the four of them had a lovely lunch of egg salad sandwiches. Harry only spilled a little bit of orange juice down his front, which Niall is considering a win. He remembers Harry at sixteen without the almost blood loyalty to straws, and he sighs a bit. Another thing for Harry to remember. Or re-learn.

Harry perches on the edge of the desk, spreading his knees in a pair of gym shorts. He hasn’t put the skinny jeans back on since they arrived at his house yesterday. “The gentlemen need to breathe, Gem,” he’d said, wiggling his hips none-too-subtly. “Are you sure we should be poking around in here?” Harry asks, putting a hand on Niall’s shoulder to steady himself. His hands are icy, and his thumb slips under Niall’s collar. He goes stiff, and Harry pulls his hand away slowly, almost self-consciously. “I mean,” Harry goes on, “there could be important stuff in here.”

“That’s sort of the point, Haz,” Niall says dryly. Gemma wanders into Harry’s office, her hair tied back from her face in one of Harry’s Givenchy scarves. Harry’s eyes light up with interest when he notices it.

The computer monitor flickers to life. Harry’s one of the few people Niall knows with a desktop computer still, but he’s recorded demos on it. Niall thinks that “Little Bit of Your Heart” might be on here somewhere, Harry’s voice raspy from the Where We Are tour. North America, maybe? Niall’s not sure.

The login screen comes on, and Niall cracks his fingers over the keyboard. He tries the usual stuff first, Gemma’s birthday, Anne’s. Then he tries Harry’s X-Factor number, the last few digits of his social security number, the name of his first dog.

Gemma takes a conspicuous sip of her drink. “Not the Tom Cruise you thought you were, eh, Nialler?” She reaches out and ruffles his hair, and Niall steals a sip of her drink. It’s some kind of pomegranate orange juice thing over ice, and Niall gags.

“Christ, I thought you knew better than digging around Harry’s pantry?”

“It’s healthy,” Gemma says, in a dead-on impersonation of her brother.

Niall smacks his lips. “It tastes like fossilized fruit, I’ll take mine in solid form next time, thanks.”

“Har har,” Gemma snorts, leaning down to kiss his forehead. She drifts away, humming a bit of “History.”

Harry’s eyes are very wide when Niall looks over. He slides to his socked feet, the very soft sound of the carpet being crushed underfoot the only thing Harry can hear. “Well,” says Harry. “Alright. I’m going to, uh. Yeah.”

“You have to,” Niall calls. Harry stops, and Niall bites his lips. He speaks more softly. “You can’t leave,” he reminds Harry. “Not with the paps out there. Not without calling security first.”

Harry cocks his head. “I meant I was going to look for a snack.”

“Oh.” Niall scratches at his throat. “Right.”

Of course, when no one can find Harry half an hour later, Niall knows exactly what’s happened. He has his phone out and in his hand before he can even think, and the phone’s rattling on the counter when Niall remembers that of course Harry would’ve forgotten to bring it along.

“What’s going on?” Anne asks, when Gemma fetches her from Harry’s library, a book still clutched in her hand, one finger marking her spot. “Where’s Harry?”

“He snuck out,” Niall said, “like a teenager. I told him he couldn’t leave, and he…”

“You can’t blame the boy,” Anne sighs, taking her reading glasses off. She puts the book on the counter, setting her glasses on top. “Wouldn’t you hate to be caged up in one house after you woke up five years from going to sleep?”

Niall bites his lip so hard he thinks it might bleed. It’s just, this Harry has no idea what it’s like to be mobbed by a mass of fans, has no idea how to rebuff someone from trying to exploit him. Niall doesn’t think he ever got that lipstick mark out of his favorite sheepskin coat, and that one wasn’t even that bad. He didn’t bring his phone, he probably forgot his wallet. He’s just…out there. Alone.

“He doesn’t even know LA,” Gemma thinks aloud. “Not anymore.”

“Do you know where he’d go?” Anne asks levelly, obviously meaning the room at large. Niall tucks his chin into his chest, because no, he doesn’t. Sneaking off together was a thing Harry did with Zayn.

Zayn might know. Zayn wouldn’t know, Zayn wouldn’t even be a help. He probably doesn’t even remember them. Niall pushes aside all thought of calling him and slides his feet into his Supras, making for the door.

“You can’t go out,” Anne stops him, “not where they can see you. That’ll just draw more attention to us.”

“How’d he sneak out?” Gemma asks reasonably.

Niall stops, turns on his heel, and makes for the back garden. “I’ve thought about, like,” Harry had said to him, last spring, when they were recording the new album, “how to, like, escape. If my house were overrun.”

“Shit, Harry,” Niall had laughed, accepting the blunt Harry passed back to him. Julian always said it helped relax the vocal chords. Niall’s not about to argue. “Kinda dark.”

Harry had just shrugged, sitting up in his poolside lounge chair, folding his legs beneath him. “See that?” he’d pointed to the shadow of a great big elm tree. “Would scale the fence, drop into the neighbor’s garden.” His hand zoomed out like an airplane. “I’m off.”

Niall rolled in his lounger to look at Harry a bit. He’d started looking a little tired around the edges sometime between the Where We Are tour and promo’ing Four, but he’d looked especially tired then, his hair all scraped back from his face so that Niall couldn’t help but notice the tiny lines beside his eyes and mouth. They’re meant to grow into proper laughter lines someday; Niall hoped that wasn’t something that would change.

“Do you even know what’s over there?” Niall had asked.

“No,” Harry had answered. “But I fantasize about it. Maybe it’s, like, a giant pool.”

“You have a giant pool,” Niall had pointed out. They’d just come out of a swim, Harry’s skin glittering with it.

Harry half-smiled. “Yeah, but a stolen swim is always better.”

Niall drags a lawn chair over to the wooden fence bordering Harry’s surprisingly small backyard, peering over the fence. Harry’s sat at the edge of the pool, kicking his legs aimlessly. He lets out a little sigh. Niall nods down to Gemma and Anne, and then he scales the wall, vaulting over the top of it. He lands mostly on his good leg and rolls, grateful for the recent rain.

When Niall looks up from brushing himself off, Harry’s watching him. “Hey,” he says softly, his mouth soft in a pout.

Niall sits next to him slowly, careful with his bad leg. “Scared the shit out of us,” Niall admits, watching the way Harry’s foot trails the water.

“What’s this about?” Harry asks, pointing to his own foot. “That tattoo on my ankle. And look at this,” he shows Niall, pulling up the hem of his shorts, “this thing, on my thigh. I don’t,” he lets out something between a laugh and a sob, “I’m covered in these and I’ve no clue what they mean, I don’t even look like myself. I’m meant to be in sixth period maths right now, and instead I’m in LA, in a mansion I apparently own, with my mum who’s – who’s married now – and my sister, who graduated. She graduated uni and I missed it.”

Niall considers the best thing to say. “You were there,” he starts softly. “You were best man at your mum’s wedding. She was so proud of you. Kept calling you ‘my little star.’ And you went to Gem’s ceremony, even though people took pictures of you the whole time. You were there. They remember. They love you for it.”

“I can’t leave my house without a security escort or sneaking out,” Harry sniffs, wiping at his nose with his sleeve.

Niall shrugs, realizes how it’ll have come off, and says, “It’s worth it, most of the time. It’s…you’re right, we didn’t handle it right.”

“What?” Harry asks, watching Niall unfold himself. Niall offers him his hand, and Harry takes it, lets Niall pull him up. “Where are we going?”

“Home,” Niall answers, “just for a bit. Just to watch something.”

Harry settles down on the other side of the couch, Anne beside him, Gemma leaned into Niall’s side. He pulls up their last live concert film without much trouble, locates it in his own Amazon video library. In the very, very beginning of hiatus, when they were done with album promotion and he wasn’t sure what to do with himself, he’d watch it when he woke up unable to go back to sleep at four o’clock in the morning.

They’d all been so looking forward to this break. Said it would be like summer vacation, they’d even have that lads’ holiday on the coast like Louis’d talked about. Niall can’t remember the last time he heard from either Liam or Louis if not by one or the other of them reviving “oh no, niall” every time he got papped stumbling out of a club.

He thinks about Louis’s promise. They’d come running. It just doesn’t feel right, now, to pull Louis away from his baby or Liam from his writers’ retreat to Majorca. He’ll party until he feels bad about partying too much, and then he’ll settle back down again. Niall just needs to give him time.

“Wait,” Harry says, watching as the camera pans all the way around the stadium, the footage cutting to a group interview. Niall looks at the four of them squished onto the same couch. There’d finally been enough room for four of them comfortably, and still Harry had found a way to brush Niall’s thigh with his pinky every time he thought his brain might implode from boredom, from the doldrum of it all.

Christ. There were days when the break couldn’t have come soon enough. Now, though…Niall watches Harry gape in open-mouthed astonishment as the movie flicks back and forth between the huge stadium shows and the more intimate Apple show, digging down deep for those anthemic songs, opening up a vein for the softer songs of Made in the A.M.

Harry slides off the couch and pads away when the screen fades to black, his bottom lip looking sore from how much he’d bitten it. By some sort of unspoken mutual agreement, it’s Anne that pads after him.

“Kinda weird,” Gemma observes, fidgeting with the ends of her hair. Niall turns his head, his knuckles digging into his temples a bit from having his head propped up. “How much he’s, like. Himself, but not.” She watches Niall silently for a few moments. “Hey,” she says softly, finally, and Niall snorts.

“Such a Styles,” he comments, nudging her toes.

“Are you alright?” Gemma asks, undeterred. “I mean, I know I don’t completely get it, but I sort of get it, right? How much he meant to you. Means to you.”

Niall gives a quick shake of his head, like a dog flicking off water. “Fine. ‘M fine,” he adds unconvincingly. “It’ll be fine,” he tacks on.

“Have you and the boys talked any about….?”

Gemma doesn’t finish her sentence, but Niall knows what she means. No one knows what this means for the hiatus, and that’s what has Niall picking at a loose thread in the rips in his jeans. He always wears these kinds of jeans out so fast, unintentionally opening up the holes more and more until there are huge bits of his thighs hanging out of the rents in the fabric.

Niall tips his head back against the sofa and closes his eyes. What a day, he thinks. What a long, long series of days. “Nah,” he answers. He’s dozed off before he even realizes it, listening to Gemma’s quiet, steady breaths, her toes digging into his hip just enough to be soothing, his fingers muffled under his thigh.

He jerks awake when Anne smooths her hand through his hair, murmuring that it’s bedtime, dear. Niall stumbles to the guest room, his mouth tasting cottony like he’d slept with it open. He notices Harry’s doorway is open a bit, and he redirects his steps without thinking about it. Niall knocks softly and Harry calls, “Come in.”

Niall nudges the door wide, fisting at his eyes. Harry’s sat on the floor with a book open in front of him. “What are you reading?” Niall asks.

Harry shows him the cover. “The Two Towers,” he answers. “I’m at the part where Gandalf and the others corner Saruman in his castle.”

Niall leans against the doorframe. He wants to tell Harry that he’s met Gandalf, that Gandalf likes him. Thinks he’s cheeky. Instead, he says, “Yeah? What happens next?”

Harry smiles a little. “Ha. You know,” he turns the book over, leaving the pages open, the book spread like a flightless bird, “the good guys win.”

“Wish everything were that simple,” Niall comments, and Harry hums in agreement.

“Panicked,” Harry offers without being prompted. “Panicked, about who I was. I was proper good at all that, wasn’t I?” he asks, nodding toward the TV. “Singing, and doing shows, and stuff. At music.”

Niall hesitates. “The best,” he finally answers.

Harry won’t look up at him, keeps fidgeting with the book. “So, like, if you’re the Sam to my Frodo – ”

“Wait, what?” Niall straightens up. “I’m the fat dwarf?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Hobbit, and he’s not fat. Hobbits are just round. Uh, like. I don’t know. I just, um. Not so much the Frodo from the _Lord of the Rings,_ am I? I’m the Frodo from the end of _The Return of the King_.”

Fondly, Niall says, “You big nerd, I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“I’m not the Harry you want,” he says, looking away. “Not the one that can help you.”

Niall takes a deep, deep breath. Considers what he has to say. Knows he has to say it, wonders whether he’ll ever get it back. Wonders if he’ll hate himself for it, somewhere down the line. “Good thing we’re on hiatus, then, huh?” Niall says softly.

When Harry looks up at him with a look of pure relief on his face, Niall knows it was worth it. His heart aches, only a little.

***

 “I don’t think he’s coming back,” Niall slurs to Gemma when she takes him to a club the next night. “Haz, I mean.”

Gemma presses another shot into his hand, watches Niall until he tosses it back. The Fireball hits the back of his throat and slides down until it settles in his chest like a blaze, like he’s proper swallowed fire. Then she hands him another one.

“Not to the band,” Niall rambles on, his tongue feeling clumsy inside his mouth. “Not to us. He’s just…gone. All of it, gone.”

“Niall, baby,” Gemma says finally, when he’s properly sodding drunk, the shoelaces of one trainer untied but his foot too far away to reach without falling out of his chair at their table, his jacket slipping off one shoulder. “I think you should go home.”

“I am home,” Niall slurs. He wraps an arm around the bottle of whiskey on the table, some of it slopping onto his shirt when he tightens his grip and cradles it to his chest. “Me and the whiskey, where an Irish man belongs.” He hiccups, tasting whiskey and the very faint traces of vomit, like he might be sick soon. Niall swallows.

Gemma puts her hand over his. “I mean your real home,” she says. “Go back to London. Do your own thing.”

“But – ”

“You can’t take care of him if you’re hurting yourself worse,” Gemma says, gently but firmly, her touch on his arm so light. So gentle, and so grounding.

Niall tries very hard to make her face swim into focus. “Like me sister,” he manages to get out. “Love you.”

Gemma cups his cheek, the bristles on his chin scraping her hand almost audibly. Niall leans into her touch, nuzzling into her palm. She smells like Harry’s dishwashing fluid and her own flowery perfume, and beneath that, something earthy, like Harry. “Love you, too,” Gemma murmurs back, her hand cool against his overheated skin.

Niall wakes up the next morning with a blinding headache and a ping on his email app that he’s got a flight back to London scheduled for that evening. Niall looks at the flight voucher, his mouth tasting like something’s died in it. He could just not board, he knows. He thinks of Gemma’s familiar eyes, kind and wide, and he knows he has to.

Harry knocks just once before he piles through the door. “You’re leaving?” he asks. “But, like. Gemma and Mum play too good at ping-pong, they never go my speed, and they don’t,” he pauses, mouthing wordlessly for a moment. “If you leave then it’s not real, or something.”

“C’mere,” Niall says, without thinking about it. Harry shuts the door and fumbles his way up the bed, dropping heavily onto Niall’s legs like he can keep him there somehow. Harry twists around until only his lower body is sprawled over Niall’s legs, the rest of him twisted around to search Niall’s face. The way his face looks at rest is different, even, Niall thinks, like he’s not half-grimacing against a camera flash all the time. “Just checking on the missus,” Niall says. “You know. I’ve got a ficus I’m trying to keep alive and my golf game’s been getting better, a bit. Can’t lose steam on that.”

“I’m a popstar,” Harry says. “I don’t know how to be a popstar.”

Niall snorts. “Well, I can’t much help with that. Not one of them meself.”

Harry frowns, his face going all wrinkled up.

“You’ll figure it out,” Niall says softly. “You have before.”

“Not on my own,” Harry says, looking down at his hands. “I want to meet the other lads. Sometime. When it’s convenient.”

Niall counts his breaths. “Liam’s birthday is in August,” he says. “If you still want to – if that’s something you want to do, then, we’ll set it up.” He looks up at the ceiling for a long, long moment. “You don’t need me,” he hears himself say. He grins crookedly. “Never did really, did us.”

Harry looks at him with wide, dubious green eyes. Niall tenses for a split second as though Harry will reach out and dig his fingers into his side, put his face down against Niall’s jeans and sniff his detergent and his cologne, try to worm his way into Niall’s bed and wrap himself up in the duvet like a burrito.

Tentatively, vulnerably, Harry smiles. “You’ll miss me, though, right?”

Niall chokes on a disbelieving laugh. “‘Course,” Niall says, like it’s that simple. Maybe it is. “Yeah, of course.”

“Good,” Harry says, with a kind of fierce satisfaction.

Niall takes a cab to the airport. His foot nudges the bag at his feet, and he bites his lip. The thing is, if he’s got to leave Harry when Harry could use his help, then he’s going to make it as easy for him as possible. Niall nudges the bag with his toes, feeling the hard edges of one of Harry’s journals against his trainer. He’s got the whole lot of them in his weekender, pilfered from his library just before Niall was due to fly out, his clothes and deodorant and toothbrush all dumped into one of the drawers of the bureau in Harry’s guest room.

It feels a little – okay, a lot – like a crime to have stolen them. But it’s for Harry’s best interest, Niall thinks. He doesn’t need to know about – about everything. About the violations of his privacy and the stuff he’s lost because of the band, the way he’s been hurt. He can – maybe he can have a fresh start, the way they’d talked about sometimes. Going away for a bit to get it all cleared up again and start over.

Niall owes Harry that, he thinks. The Harry he’d known and loved. The one he’d grown up with. He can picture Harry’s face so clearly, the shadows under his eyes and the tiredness in his smile, the familiarity of it. “I love you,” Niall wants to tell him.

There’s a Harry just a phone call away, but it’s not the same. He’s not the same.

Niall’s still going to miss him.

***

Eoghan rings Niall while he’s in the middle of washing dishes, and he thinks about not picking up. His hands are pruny and wet with hot soap water, and he’s not sure he wants to go three rounds with Eoghan, anyway. “What are you doing? What have you got in the works? Want to come on the show for a bit, stay as a guest host?” It always ends with an offer to stay on as long as he’d like, to come stay with Eoghan and his girlfriend and crash in their guest room. Get in touch with his roots again.

It’s not that it’s not a nice offer, it’s that it feels too much like going backwards. Niall’s a grown man, almost 23, he doesn’t need his mate offering to let him crash like the night after a bad break-up to pack up and move on.

He’s just not sure which direction “moving on” entails. And he’s not about to jump the gun and sign up for just anything, so he’s not done…anything.

Sighing, Niall wipes his hands on the dishrag and quicksteps across the kitchen to scoop his phone off the counter. He’d been listening to Springsteen’s Live 1975-85 album, the one with “No Surrender” on, and he’s always struck by how much that song changes from studio version to live. The way it grows wings and soars, feels like, even if it puts a pit in Niall’s stomach. It’s so much sadder, and so much more real.

“What?”

Eoghan laughs. “Is that any way to greet one of your best friends?”

“If me best friend would stop nagging me worse than me mum, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Niall answers.

Outside, his garden is bursting with all the stuff he’d planted this spring, when he’d just come home from tour. It’s been a welcome distraction from the steady monotony of his newly band-less life, even though he does the same thing every day. Pick weeds and pluck off dead growths and drive those metal stakes into the ground to shape the way the ivy and the sycamore is going to grow. Watching it grow up around him, like a new way of telling time.

Instead of sighing and talking around asking Niall over again, Eoghan says, “Well, enough of that. How about a lads’ holiday?”

“Holiday?” Niall perks up, thinking of his and Louis’s trips to Vegas.

“Think it’s time we took that trip we always talked about,” Eoghan allows, a firm edge slipping into his words, like he’s not going to let Niall worm his way out of it. “That trip all along the coast of Ireland. Yeah?”

“I don’t know,” Niall still tries, feeling like he’s trying to gauge how much breathing room he has in one of those narrow tailored suits that look so good on, even if they’re not much in the way of comfort. How much wiggle room Eoghan will leave him to push it off, to stay in his house and tend to his garden and pluck the strings only on nights out with his mates, usually when he’s too drunk off his face to think about the next time he’ll play on stage in front of a teeming crowd.

Eoghan replies, “Don’t have time for ‘I don’t know,’ Nialler, I already bought the van.”

“You bought a van?” Niall asks.

“A green one,” Eoghan answers. “Almost got it working, too. Pack your shit and get over here as soon as possible, and off we’ll go.”

Niall thinks of the ultimate trump card. “What about the rest of the lads? Surely they can’t all take off at the same time?”

“Bressie’s in,” Eoghan says immediately, “and Laura, and now, you. The gang’s all here.”

“Hardly all the gang,” Niall mutters. There’s so many of them now it’s ridiculous.

“Get your skinny arse here or I’ll drag you myself,” Eoghan says, the joking tone all gone out of his voice.

Niall really doesn’t have a good excuse not to go. “Be there soon,” he sighs.

“Soon” turns out to be just two weeks later, a week earlier than Niall had been banking on, because his mum rings that she’s coming to London to tidy up the flat he rents her. Wants to sell it, she says.

“I’m sure I can find someone to do that for you,” Niall offers, sat across from her at one of those cafes with the outdoor tables. Harry eats outside, Niall knows, in LA, has been papped enough times now and in years past. It never rains in southern California, though, not like London even in the middle of July, rains like it seems like it might never stop, like there’s some hole in the atmosphere above England and all the water outside Earth just leaks right through. “Do you not like the place anymore?”

Maura folds her hands together on the tabletop, studying the ring on her fourth finger. It’s just a simple gold band, but that’s fitting for Maura, who’d much rather do her peacocking amongst the family as the single greatest sliotar player ever born.

“I spoke to Anne,” she says, and Niall feels his stomach twirl and do a faceplant, sits forward in his seat without meaning to. ‘Course he’s kept up with Harry as much as he can without actively meaning to, just reading the front covers of gossip rags at the till and the snippets about him he hears on the radio. Apparently he’s gotten into a few sticky situations, a couple of in-bed shots got out with some fashion mogul bird, and a few angry former-friends who don’t realize Harry didn’t mean to snub them by saying he can’t remember them.

They’ve all got these media scars. It’s just rotten to watch Harry go through it all a second time. If the hype from the early days of the band was bad, it’s nothing compared to now, this whole narrative built up by the press that he’s some kind of dumbfuck phoenix born out of superstardom or some shite.

Harry’s not called him since Niall sent along the list of every password he remembered Harry having for every device. Niall’s not called, either. Isn’t sure that he can, somehow. Especially not with his bag full of Harry’s journals shoved to the back of his closet like dirty laundry, like a dumb kid with some big secret. Christ, he’s done himself well, here.

“How is he?” Niall finds himself asking, just a smidge too fast. “I mean, she, how’s Anne doing?”

Maura takes a deliberate sip of her steaming Irish breakfast tea while she thinks. Niall doesn’t know how she can bear to drink that when this pub’s not even got aircon. Niall’s almost sweating out of his light button-up shirt. “Harry calls every other day, like he used to,” she says, and Niall can see him stretched out on the back of the tour bus, the shitty one they’d had for the Up All Night tour. Used to drive Zayn mad, Harry’s voice droning on and on and on, till Zayn would inevitably have Louis pinch his nipple or pull his hair, get him distracted enough to drop the phone.

“That must be good for Anne,” Niall says tightly. “Good son, and all that.” He thinks of his somewhat spotty track record for ringing his mum, pushes it aside. They don’t have – they’re not like Anne and Harry or Gemma in that way, never have been. ‘S just the way it is.

Only, what Niall hopes Maura doesn’t know is, sometimes he’d pick up Harry’s discarded phone, let Anne know he wasn’t murdered by a fan, was just stuck in Liam’s headlock while Louis tickled him to death. “And how are you, dear?” she’d ask. “Louis’s been doing his vocal exercises, right? And Zayn gets enough time to draw?” Like he was an adult, not another kid that needed to be taken care of, even if he was just that, being helped by her helping. Like she realized the best thing was making the worrying better, not stopping the worrying.

He could’ve called Anne, Niall realizes. He should’ve.

Maura just nods. “She doesn’t seem to mind it. Says he’s getting on alright, still texts her a few times a day asking who someone is. It’s not uncommon amongst amnesia patients, apparently, some short-term memory loss.”

Short-term memory loss. For Christ’s sake. Niall can just picture Harry piddling his way around the streets of LA on that stupid motorcycle and getting lost, can’t remember where he is or how he got there or whether he was on his way to something.

“He’s looking forward to meeting Louis and Liam, has spoken to them a bit,” Maura goes on. “On Facetime, and text. They seem to get on alright.”

That’s what Liam had said when Niall finally broke and called and asked about a fortnight ago. Fucking hell, he couldn’t remember the password to their groupchat. “Likes me alright, thinks I’m a bit of a stick in the mud, I think,” Liam had laughed, snorting a bit like Harry was proper sixteen, just a silly kid. Though, to be fair, Liam had done that up to and including the last time Niall saw them together, so. “He and Louis get on amazing, though.”

“Does he know about…?” Niall had asked.

“Googled it,” Liam admitted sheepishly. “Then he googled, you know, the one for me and him, and you and him, and me and Louis, so,” Liam laughed. “Don’t think he quite, like. Grasps it. Which is maybe for the best.”

“Good,” Niall agrees. No one should have to know what that’s like.

Liam goes on, “So since, like, Harry doesn’t really know, I don’t know, it’s like Louis doesn’t have to – or maybe it’s because Harry seems to really like him, I guess – but they proper get on, I think they talk as much as me and Louis do.”

“Really?” Niall asks. His mind boggles a bit. He wonders what on Earth Louis and Harry have in common. But maybe that’s just it. Louis hardly knew Harry, seemed like, there toward the end, and so maybe that’s what they have to get on about.

Harry would love seeing pictures of Louis’s baby, and Louis would love Harry’s stories about the shags he’d had with whatever bird. Gadding about and making trouble, although hopefully he’ll learn his lessons faster this time round. Niall wondered if they talk about work.

“Yeah?” Niall asks, fingering his glass of iced water. Beads of condensation run down the side of the green glass, and it feels like it means something, how fast it’s all moving. How nothing stays the same, even if it’s all fucking water. “That all?”

“She says Harry would like to get to know you,” Maura answers, and Niall knows that her eyes on him are cutting, too clever by half, “but that he’s not sure where to start.”

Niall snorts. “It’s not like I’m hard to know, really. Quite a simple man.”

Maura just hums noncommittally, and Niall hunches forward a bit, over his quivering stomach.

Niall thinks about the natural direction of this conversation. Thinks about the latest pics of Zayn with bright blue hair, his face twisted up in a sneer on the cover of Seventeen Magazine, and he doesn’t ask.

“I’ll call Anne,” Niall tells Maura. “Soon, I promise.”

“Well,” Maura shakes her napkin into her lap, the waiter setting their food down in front of them. Maura’s having fish and chips, Niall a salad. It’s a bit of a guilt salad, the way he eats healthy around his mum as if she won’t notice his fridge stocked with Stella and the perch Bobby sends him on the reg. He’s an expert on the many different ways of cooking fish now. “Alright.”

“And the flat,” Niall prompts her. “Do you want a bigger one, or one closer to the city, or…?” It still makes him feel awkward, making offers like that. Like a flat in the middle of London is chump change. He might have to live off what he’s got for the rest of his life.

Jesus. Niall can’t even begin to think about that right now.

“No, it’s just,” Maura swirls a chip around gravy for a minute. She has this way of thinking before she speaks and the words still coming out a bit sharpish, like the clatter of a spring-loaded squeaky porch door slamming shut, and Niall loves her for it. He grew up on that back porch. “You got me the flat so that I could see you when you’re home,” she says slowly, “and still I never see you. I think, if you’re to be around, you should start visiting us in Mullingar more. A weekend every few months would be nice,” she adds, holding up her hands.

A weekend every few months. Christ, that’s nothing, Niall thinks. And still Maura looks like she’s trying not to ask for too much, like he could beg off and she’d understand. He’s spent all of a week at home in the past few years.

Niall calls Eoghan that night. “I’m coming to yours tomorrow,” he tells him, and Eoghan hoots with delight.

Eoghan starts excitedly rattling off the list of places to visit they’d accumulated over the years, how best to pack, whether it’s worth it to book hotels all along the way or to have a proper campout, which one of them Laura would be willing to bunk with on an air mattress if so. “I can’t wait,” Eoghan sums up, and then goes off again on what food to eat, local or to cook, and so on.

“Can’t wait either,” Niall says, and it feels true.

***

“This is a total clusterfuck,” Niall observes, watching Eoghan monkey around in the back of the van, trying to rearrange their stuff like it’s a game of tetris. “There’s hardly room for me, let alone Bressie.”

“Hope you’re not calling me fat,” Bressie shouts from where he’s packing a cooler full of beer, the muscles in his arms rippling as he shreds another plastic bag full of ice.

Laura leans in and whispers “He does know that that’ll stay cold for, what, a day?” too loud, because Bressie turns and whips her a bottle of Guinness.

“First drink’s on Laura! Let the holiday begin. A drink for every time one of you mention real life stuff.”

Laura catches it and pries the lid off with her teeth. “What about you?” Niall asks, starting to smile. A light layer of rain drizzles down on them, as to be expected, and they’re not so far from the coast that Niall can’t taste the salt on the air, the way his knee loosens up a bit and his sinuses go crystal clear. “Not got a tight enough grasp of the real world as is, eh?”

Bressie snorts and pretends to lob a bottle at Niall, settles for slinging an arm around his shoulders and pressing Niall’s face to his barrel of a chest. He smells like Irish Springs Soap and drugstore deodorant, just like Niall’s da would, and Niall can’t help but laugh. Lot of sentimental Irish saps, they are.

“First drink done,” Laura announces, tossing the empty bottle back to Bressie. She does a graceful bow. “Let the road trip begin.”

Niall settles into the passenger seat for the first leg of the trip, fidgeting with the audio tuner that’s apparently literally just a dial, no finder for radio stations. There’s an oldies station playing Duran Duran, “Ordinary World,” though, and Niall settles back into his seat.

Bressie glances over from the driver’s seat, stretches out his ridiculously long legs and nudges Niall’s knee with his own. Niall rolls his head to look at him. “Alright?”

“Good,” Niall agrees. Good, better than he expected when he stepped off the plane, better than he felt even when he woke up this morning without a hangover after having a reunion dinner with the others last night, singing Pogues songs at the top of their lungs while Eoghan danced about in a makeshift bra and skirt of empty beer bottles strung together on Niall’s belt. Feels right, like.

Bressie just nods and turns the music up.

They roast marshmallows and hot dogs over a bonfire at the beach that night, and none of Laura’s vomit gets on Niall or their air mattress when she voms an entire fifth of vodka that night.

Of course, they pop a tire the next day and the jolt sends Eoghan’s “entirely necessary, Niall” boombox crashing down on Niall’s head. Eoghan and Laura go back up the road to the repair shop to call for a tow since none of them have any reception, so Niall kicks back on the roof of the van, nursing his aching head. The metal’s hot, but not as hot as it’d be in Australia or America somewhere with more direct sunlight. The air smells like seasalt and sweat and sunscreen, and Niall breathes deep, closing his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses.

Bressie presses a bottle into his hand, peering over the top of the van.

“What’s this for?” Niall asks. He’s got a driving shift coming up. Maybe Bressie just needs it opened for him. Thinks it’d be hilarious if Niall risked his pretty smile for a goddamn bottle of beer.

Bressie shrugs, clambering over the top of the van, half-throwing himself from the top of the cooler. Niall thinks he hears the plastic strain threateningly. There’s not nearly as much room with Bressie up there beside him, but he smells familiar, like Ireland and the sort of man Niall grew up measuring himself against. Plus, he brought him a drink.

“What are you going to do when we get back?” Bressie asks. He takes a deliberate drink of his own beer, and Niall understands that Bressie’s got him trapped up here, like. He’s never been one to storm off, and he doesn’t much want to. Feels like it’d take too much energy.

“Dunno,” Niall shrugs. He’s tried not to think about it. He’s quite good at it, too, except for when he’s lying in bed at night, rubbing the pad of his index finger against his thumb and wondering whether his callouses are getting softer. Clock feels like it’s ticking then.

“Let me rephrase,” Bressie says. “What do you want to do?”

And for the first time in his life, Niall’s not sure. Bressie doesn’t push him any further, but Niall drains the whole beer in one go like he knows Bressie can tell he’s thinking about it. Following their rule.

He can’t lie still any longer, though, not with his fingertips going soft and his body feeling squidgy, lightning racing up his back from the heated metal top of the van and desperate for a good workout, mad at himself that he’d let himself lose some of the weight he worked so hard to put on. Glad that it hasn’t affected his knee, but he’s got that feeling again, like he’s been moving backwards and not realized it. Like his garden hadn’t been growing around him, he’d just been shrinking within it, losing himself, or some shit. Harry would know.

Harry would know. Niall slides off the top of the van, lands on the cooler Bressie used to get up to the damn thing, the plastic lid creaking under his weight. He stumbles off to dip his toes in the water and ring Harry, forgetting that he can’t get a signal.

Like a miracle, though, he can. The moment he steps into the Irish sea, he’s got two bars. The connection is flimsy even when Niall holds the phone up to his ear to listen to it ring, the ringing bits further apart than they ought to be.

“Hi,” Harry answers, the word drawn out, only curving up into a question a bit. Just a bit.

“Hello,” Niall says, sounding ridiculously formal. He clears his throat. “Uh, I mean, hi.”

“Hi,” Harry just repeats, so at least Niall’s not coming across as the only conversational genius in this interaction.

Niall licks his lips and says, “It’s Niall, by the way. Horan. From – ”

“Niall,” Harry laughs softly, sounding so much like himself that Niall’s whole heart aches. Chest, ribs, all of it. The whole thing. “I know who you are.” He goes quiet again, and Niall tenses without meaning to, because even little baby Harry with that ridiculous mad cap of curls would drone on and on if you let him.

“Is something wrong?” Niall asks, biting the inside of his cheek. If someone else slipped on the side of the pool he’s just never coming back from this roadtrip, for Christ’s sakes.

There’s the muffled sound of Harry moving about, maybe like he’s sitting down, which is never a good sign. “So,” Harry starts, his voice calm. Deliberately so. “I was, like, trying to catch up,” he starts, “watching the X-Factor stuff and the live shows and stuff. Listening to the albums.”

“Yeah?” Niall prompts him, thinking that Harry’s going to ask about Zayn, maybe, or ask how they picked solos, or something like that.

He’s not expecting it in the least when Harry says, “Listened to ‘Don’t Forget Where You Belong.’ Like that one a lot.”

“Uh…huh,” Niall says, taking a step back from the water as the tide gathers, the salty water gathering against his knees. He’s still in the shallows, grainy sand washing against his legs every time the waves recoil into the sea only to roll back out.

Harry talks again, his voice so still over the line, not full of that languor Niall’s used to. Like…like Harry’s mad at him. It takes Niall so long to figure it out that he misses the first half of what Harry’s said. “…so I called Louis, and what do you know, Liam’s got no sense of geography.”

“Yes,” Niall says brilliantly, because this is pretty well-established. So much so that Niall put it into his song. So what?

“So I’m meant to have pages,” Harry says acridly. “Pages of memory.”

“Shit,” Niall says before he can help himself.

Harry’s breath sounds controlled, like he picked up yoga again, when he says, “And Mum says I had journals. Loads of them. But they’re not here, they’re not in London. In fact, pretty much the only place I would bet they’d be is…”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Niall starts, and then he starts to perceive how utterly he’s fucked up. “I mean, I did. I just – ”

“They’re _my_ journals,” Harry says, his voice flickering with anger, his control slipping. “They’re not yours. They don’t belong to you, and neither do I.”

Niall goes quiet for so long that he’s surprised Harry doesn’t hang up on him. “No,” he finally agrees. “I know that.”

“Then kindly return them at your convenience,” Harry snaps out, in that brittle tone he gets when he’s afraid he might be about to cry.

Niall knows better than to push. Even though he wants to. Even though he wants to hang up and redial this number and have the real Harry pick up, his one, who’d invite him to read the damn journals if he cared that much. Who looked at him in that way that Niall could never bear for very long. What wouldn’t he give to have Harry look at him that way just one last time?

“I’m sorry,” Niall says. “I will.”

“Good,” Harry says, his breathing harsh through his nose. “Alright. Bye, then.”

“Bye.”

The line goes dead, his favorites list up again. And it’s like it’s finally real. Like there proper is no hope of – of ever getting those five years past. They’re gone, just like Harry’s memory.

Well. Alright. His heart’s going so fast, like he’s just run a marathon. Oh, Christ. First thing, then. Niall’s thumb hovers over the delete button for a long, long time before he musters up the nerve to delete Harry from his phone.

“I don’t know,” Niall tells Bressie when he walks back to Eoghan’s ridiculous green van. He doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, but Eoghan and Laura are back, and they look not a little worried. Bressie doesn’t, though. Before he was a singer, he was a footballer. Maybe he gets it.

That’s the thing about making one dream come true. You’ve got to find another after.

“Not a bad place to start,” Bressie shrugs, offering Niall another Stella.

So Niall squeezes between Eoghan and Laura onto a driftwood log, the flames over their bonfire blue and green from the salt.

Yeah, well. True.

***

Niall’s flight lands in Los Angeles without a problem, the brakes squeaking on the tarmac as the plane slows, stops. Niall stops trying to chew a hole through his thumb and slings his back across his chest, turns airplane mode off and his phone greets him with a slew of texts from Liam. The last one reads, _here !!_ so Niall’s expecting it when he passes through security and finds Liam and Louis waiting for him just past the checkpoint, Liam’s face already lit up with a smile.

“Boy!” Liam hollers, dropping the sign with Niall’s name on and scooping Niall up into a hug. He’s hardly bigger than Niall, but he squeezes him so tight, scrunching Niall up beneath his chin, and Niall relaxes. He takes a deep, deep breath, feels like it’s the first one since he boarded the damn plane.

Liam holds him out at arm’s length. “Happy birthday,” Niall says, pinching his eyebrow, “but you don’t get to call me boy.”

“Lad,” Louis says approvingly, prying Niall out of Liam’s arms. It’s subtle, the way Louis briefly presses his nose to the side of Niall’s head and breathes him in, cupping the back of skull for a moment, but Louis pulls back with a soft smile on his face.

Niall elbows him gently in the side. “Such a dad,” he mutters, and Liam ruffles both their hair, loops an arm around each of their necks. Their security escort has formed a phalanx around them, but Niall can see fans’ cameras going. He wonders what the captions on the shots of them in gossip rags will be. _Three-fourths of former boyband One Direction reunited, minus the prodigal son_.

That’s probably too hard. Niall’s not even sure he’s in a place to tease Harry, not when Harry was so upset with him. Not when Harry doesn’t even know him, really.

For the first time, it occurs to Niall that Harry might grow into someone that Niall doesn’t know. That’s the alternative, isn’t it? To him growing into the person Niall knew. That he becomes someone else.

Isn’t that what Niall thought was better for him?

Oh, God. It’s way too fucking early in the afternoon for an existential crisis.

“What should we do?” Liam asks, squeezing the back of Niall’s neck.

“Let’s get some drinks,” Niall answers, so Liam steers them out into the blinding sunlight. Niall closes his eyes and lets Liam push him along.

“I just think,” Liam’s saying when Niall comes back from the bar with the next round, “that we really could’ve worked out.”

Niall rolls his eyes just a little bit, just so that Liam won’t notice. Across the table, Louis does the same, although he reaches out and pats the back of Liam’s hand. “There, there, lad.”

“Maybe that was part of it,” Niall muses. He’s drunker than he feels, can tell by the way he can’t shut himself up. “You can’t, like, shape someone.”

“Sure you can,” Louis objects, narrowing his eyes. “We all did.”

Silence descends over them. Their table suddenly feels very big, the way it never did when they stopped at Subway as lads and Harry’s knees would bump everyone else’s under the table, Zayn half-asleep on Liam’s shoulder. The whole lot of them jostling for someone else’s unwanted tomato slices or avocado spears like they hadn’t just custom-ordered their own sandwich. It was more fun to share.

“Yeah, but not, like,” Niall starts. He can’t figure out what he’s trying to articulate, something about the other person shaping you, too. Can’t figure out what it all means. “Anyway.” He shakes his head, claps Liam on the shoulder. “Shots,” he says, “for the birthday boy.”

“When we were having his birthday do with the Wolvie lads,” Louis leads them into a long-winded anecdote from a few days ago that he’s already blown into epic proportions.

Niall waits until Louis’s up settling their tab to ask Liam, “When’s Harry getting in?” He leans over the table to speak quietly even though Bas and Paddy and Fredo have formed a protective barrier around them, their bodies bizarrely massive in black t-shirts under the multi-colored lights of the club.

Liam lifts his head slowly, looking more like a puppy than any human being should have a right to. “He’s already here,” Liam answers. “Had a thing with, uh, someone tonight.”

“Someone?” Niall asks. Wonders if Harry’s reliving his own past with Kendall or something.

Liam just shrugs. “Can’t wait to see him,” Liam confesses. He leans down and presses his flushed cheek to the table. Niall can smell him across the table. He’d thrown an awful lot of crazy shapes on the dance floor tonight, Niall ought to have taken pictures. He’s got enough embarrassing photos of Liam to blackmail him with for the rest of his life, to be fair. “Missed the little fella.”

“You and Louis have a distorted notion of small,” Niall slurs.

Niall and Liam stay at Louis’s. Actually, Niall stays over; Liam seems to have moved in, if his cluttered guest room is any indication, as well as his awful protein shakes in Louis’s fridge. Louis’s nanny bustles around the kitchen with Louis’s baby gathered in the crook of her arm preparing a bottle.

“Looks a bit like an alien,” Niall whispers when she’s safely gone.

“I heard that,” Louis says, slapping the back of his head. He goes to the pantry and grabs an apron out of it. Niall holds his breath in fear for a split second, and then Louis tosses him the apron. “You owe me breakfast.”

Harry shows up halfway through brekkie, the lazy bastard. Niall’s stood over the hob with greasy pans full of fried eggs, sizzling bacon and sausage, and chocolate chip pancakes when the doorbell goes. Liam’s up and answering it as if he owns the place, Louis not far behind.

Niall can hear them talking in the entrance hall for a moment, and he turns the spatula over and over in his hand. The food’s at that point where it’s stuck to the pan until it’s done cooking and comes off easy, and he wishes he had something to do. He’s already buttered eight slices of toast and sliced up three apples and what he’s pretty sure was a plum he found in the back of the fridge.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting when the wonder twins return to the kitchen trailing Harry, but it’s not Harry having one good look at him and spluttering out a laugh.

“What?” Niall asks, looking down to make sure he’s not got an exploded pancake all over him or something.

“Your apron,” Harry says, his eyes all crinkly with how hard he’s smiling. “It says ‘I’m a fungi.’ That’s so funny. Don’t you get it?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” Niall rolls his eyes. He turns back to the grill so that he won’t throw the spatula at Harry’s head, or hug him.

Harry cozies up to him, eyeing the food over Niall’s shoulder. Niall can feel his breath on the back of his neck, and it makes him shiver. “Back off,” Niall says. “I’m not sneaking you chocolate chips if you’re all up on me like that.”

“There’s enough food for a small army here,” Harry observes, not moving away.

“One Direction is a small army,” Louis says. It’s a meaningless little joke, Niall’s not even really sure what it means except that Louis could say One Direction is anything and there was a time in his life where it was true, because One Direction was everything, and Harry quiets. Niall is the only one who notices, Liam and Louis too caught in tossing Louis’s baby three inches into the air, so Niall doesn’t mention it.

They sing happy birthday to Liam over his celebratory pancakes, and then Louis moves the party out to the pool, where he pushes Harry into the water.

Harry comes up spluttering a laugh.

“Funnily enough,” Liam muses, looking at Baby Tarzan with his long hair stuck to his face like tentacles of seaweed, “this isn’t the first time that’s happened to you.”

Niall catches his breath, half-hoping Harry hasn’t heard him. Harry just laughs, though, tosses back his head to get his hair out of his face and, when that doesn’t work, goes down under the water to smooth it back.

Louis brings them all bottles of beer. It’s only eleven o’clock in the morning, and Niall’s seen the state of his alcohol cabinet, so he steels himself for spending the day in a haze of drunkenness.

It’s nice like it hasn’t been in ages, the four of them together. Harry’s not – he’s not the Harry Niall knew so well, who wouldn’t look at Louis without looking pained, or who would fall asleep standing up he was so tired. Instead, he laughs at all of Louis’s jokes and gamely crawls onto Liam’s shoulders for a game of chicken. Niall plays top for Louis, which is a mistake, because Louis’s nails dig into Niall’s knees as Louis shouts unprintable things at the opposition, laughing like mad every time Liam accidentally swallows a mouthful of water.

It’s maybe the most fun Niall’s had in years, actually.

The sun’s almost set, their stock of beer depleted and the Jack about to make an appearance, when Louis and Liam go inside to order a pizza. A couple of pizzas, Niall hopes, with mushrooms and anchovies and pineapples.

That’s one thing nobody tells you about traveling all over the world. You bring home the weirdest eating habits.

Briana had come by earlier to pick up the wee babe to take back to her place. Niall knows it bothers Louis that they’re not – that he’s not, like, the Dad, in the sense that he’s always wanted to be, but he can see Briana’s side of it. He can see Louis’s, too, though, how he always rises to the occasion. You just have to give him the opportunity.

But that’s for them to work out.

“You look like you’re having serious thoughts,” Harry says. Niall’s head jerks around and he spots Harry at the edge of the pool, his arms braced the side. With his dumbass mermaid tattoo, he looks like he might well be some kind of water creature. Maybe a siren, with the smile on his face.

His voice is so familiar that Niall can almost feel it rumbling in his own chest, and he leans over and smooths down one of Harry’s eyebrows where it’s gone mad. His eyes are so wide and green, and he’s so achingly close, like Niall’s only just realized how much he’s missed him.

Harry’s breath rattles in his chest when he inhales. “Don’t,” he just says, and Niall doesn’t have the time to decide how to respond before Harry’s kicking away from the wall of the pool. He looks over his shoulder with a grin, and Niall’s diving into the pool without another thought, his borrowed swim trunks fluttering against his legs in the cool water.

When Niall gets close, Harry sinks down low in the water, so that his nose is only just above the waterline. He looks like a child hiding under the bedcovers, and he looks like a frog in Louis’s million-dollar pond, and Niall just smiles at him.

“Thought you were mad at me,” he surprises himself by saying. “Not that I blame you.”

Harry studies him for a long moment before he bobs back above the surface of the water. “Was,” Harry shrugs. He pushes himself away from the wall, and Niall, again. Niall moves after him. “I didn’t write about you,” Harry says. “Did you know that?”

“I didn’t read them,” Niall confesses quickly, like it should be some kind of consolation. “I promise.”

“Why do you think I didn’t write about you?” Harry just asks, suddenly not moving away anymore. Niall’s very close to him. _I know what you’re doing_ , Niall remembers thinking in the hospital.

 _Uh-oh_ , he thinks now. Shit.

Niall laughs weakly, offers a shrug. “Guess you didn’t need to.”

Harry treads water for a moment, just looking at him. It shouldn’t make Niall uncomfortable, but it does, for some reason. “Did you know I was in love with you?” Harry asks. Niall gapes, and Harry shrugs. “Just seems obvious, is all,” he adds softly.

He’s suddenly far, far too close. It’s too much, like the water is all pressing in on Niall, crushing him. Harry’s there, though, a constant, solid presence. He moves in closer like he’s caught in the same whirlpool Niall is, Niall’s breath going all tight and high up in his chest like he’s about to have a panic attack. Harry’s legs brush Niall’s in the water, and his skin is so soft and cool, and there’s so much of it, the light playing off against the butterfly on his stomach so that it almost looks alive.

Harry kisses him with all the eagerness of a teenager, licks into his mouth and wraps his arms around Niall’s neck to hold him close. It’s not much different from hugging him when Niall puts his hands on Harry’s hips, remembers Harry snuffling into his neck a hundred times before. He’s just not used to Harry sliding his knee between Niall’s, pressing his thigh up into Niall’s groin, groaning a little when Niall pulls him closer.

“Christ,” Niall says, when Harry draws away for a breath. His hands are all over Niall’s back and Niall can see his own, as if they aren’t attached to him, spread over the swallows on Harry’s chest, his fingers hooked over the top of Harry’s collarbones. “Shit,” Niall says, pushing Harry away.

“What?” Harry asks, his face slipping into a pout.

Niall lets out a hysterical little laugh. “You’re my best mate, is what.”

“I – so?”

“So, you…” Niall licks his lips, tasting Harry’s sunscreen and the sweet apple cider he’d been drinking instead of beer. “You’re too young for me.”

“Twenty-two,” Harry argues, like that’s at all believable when his hair’s dripping onto his shoulders and he’s started layering flannels again. Course, for him, it’s the first time.

Niall looks at his face in the haziness of dusk, the light making everything soft, his face losing all those hard edges and sharp angles he’d picked up over time and training. Oh, but he’s not that young. Niall’s not, anyway. He looks at Harry, and all he can see is the thin green line of the coffee stirrer he stuck through Harry’s bun in Orlando, his face all twisted up after a concert when he’d put the damn boot back on his broken foot, the way his laughter lines went so, so deep when he’d hugged Niall goodbye in the airport.

He’d not thought about it in the middle of it all. Needed Harry too much, like. Needed a constant. He still needs him now, Niall supposes. 

When Harry reaches out and pulls them back together, Niall lets him, just to feel it. To remember. Harry kisses slow, and not with any particular technique. He just makes these pleased sounds into Niall’s mouth like he’s so happy to be here that it’s easy to enjoy it. Niall’s always wanted to make Harry happy.

It goes on until their heads bob under the surface of the water, Niall’s mouth filling alarmingly with chlorinated pool water until he breaks into open air, laughing. Harry’s mouth is red, and his eyes are so soft. “You don’t even know me,” Niall blurts. “Not really.”

Harry seems to understand that, like. That he is too young. That Niall’s not quite ready, maybe, as well. He still has this picture in his head of Harry as he knew him, a pair of sunglasses holding back his hair, his face lined with exhaustion. Who laughed at every dumb inside joke neither of them really remembered, except to laugh. That’s a lot of history to let go of.

And this Harry, he’s. Well, the same guy, yeah, but. But when a camera goes up he doesn’t flinch away, and the last time Liam and Louis gave him shit about bullet coffee and kale, he just looked confused. He’s a better version, almost. Maybe. Either way, he’s not Niall’s.

Even if Niall is still Harry’s. Whether he remembers it or not.

“I’m going to uni,” Harry announces when the lads are halfway through their pizzas, four faces smeared with tomato sauce, Liam’s shirt smelling ever so slightly of weed. “Figured, just. Didn’t get the chance to before. Might like to try it now.”

Louis shrugs and nods and raises a toast to Harry, and he’s not afraid to look him in the eyes or be caught looking. Like it doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s just the sort of thing they’d have outgrown, though. They toast to what’s, effectively, the end of the band. It feels right.

“I’ve got a solo deal,” Niall tells them. Liam’s head whips up, and the smile on his face – Christ, he looks so like a kid that Niall groans and palms his great big dumb, beautiful, familiar face, and Louis hooks his arm around Niall’s neck in a hug.

“Do you know,” Harry starts slowly, “I’ve got a few songs, from before. If you want them.”

Niall blinks. It’s like he’s offering the last little bit of himself, and – “Yeah,” Niall says. “I’d love that.”

Liam wraps his arms around Louis and Harry and brings them all in for a hug, his fingers tangling with Louis’s. “Look at us,” Liam says happily. “Not doing too poorly, are we, lads?”

“I don’t know,” Harry answers, his voice muffled into Liam’s armpit. “It’s, uh, kinda smelly in here.” They laugh, but Liam laughs the hardest. Niall catches Harry’s eyes, which are all crinkled up and mostly shut, and Harry just winks.

Niall snorts, and winks back. It feels like an inside joke.

*** 

TWO YEARS LATER

*** 

Niall’s first arena tour is a shortlist of all the places he never went with One Direction. “The intemperate zones,” his tour manager had muttered, studying the list of venues. The one concession Niall makes in the states is Madison Square Garden. It feels like it’s been long enough now since the last time he was there. It’s time to make some new memories.

 _Do I have to pay for tix_ Harry texts him when Niall’s packing up from the show in Buffalo.

He rolls his eyes and taps back, _sold out ages ago sry m8 :(_

Harry calls him laughing. “Prat,” he says fondly.

“We can smell our own,” Niall answers, rolling his shirts up tight and packing them against the edges of his suitcase. Trousers and pants in the middle, his toiletries back on top. “You’ve got a backstage pass, idiot. We’re cutting it close, so just go round and tell ‘em your name, and I’ll see you after the show.”

“Do you think anyone will recognize me?” Harry asks interestedly. He’s chopped all his hair off and it’s grown out super curly again, Niall knows from the stream of Snapchat pics Harry sends him.

It’s been…it’s nice to have a friend so far outside all the stuff Niall’s normally doing. Tours and dates and shows and promo. He’s lived through uni vicariously with Harry, and he’s quite sure he’s not missed much. At least, he’s not at all interested in doing that much revising. Still weird, though, to be honest.

“Feels like another life,” Niall thinks. Doesn’t mean to say. “I mean, doesn’t matter. Bring your damn uni ID if you’re that worried.”

“I will,” Harry sniffs, a smile in his voice when he rings off.

Niall’s shows are always close-feeling, he’d talked to the set designers about keeping the lights up for a large portion of the show so he could see the audience, and he makes it a point to move across the stage even with a guitar strapped over his front. He can plonk out a fair melody on the piano now and sometimes he even brings up a drum kit. It’s a lot more fly by wire than a One Direction show. He can do stuff different from show to show. It’s not bad. Not what he’d expected, but not bad.

This show, though, has the hair on Niall’s arms and the back of his neck standing on end from the moment he steps into the dressing rooms. The trundling van he takes from venue to venue left him just enough time to step into a pair of boots and pull a denim button-up over his tee, and then the show’s on.

It’s not the last show of tour, but it could well be, with the way the audience reacts. Niall comes away from it knowing that – feeling like he might’ve been five people up there, all on his own, he did his job so well.

Harry presents him with a bouquet of paper roses and a hug when he finally stumbles upon Niall in his dressing room backstage, says he’d gotten lost and accidentally walked in on Niall’s support act in a compromising position. Niall just shakes his head and hugs him back.

“Come back to mine?” Harry asks, his wonky eyebrows arched up hopefully. “I’ll have you know I have three bottles of wine, one of which isn’t the crap stuff leftover from the last philosophy 101 study session.”

“I’ll have you know I know shit about wine, so I’m not much bothered,” Niall shrugs.

Harry drives now. Again. He’d had to relearn, sent Niall picture after picture as he inched into a parallel parking spot until Niall had to text him to take a break, he was in a meeting over ticket prices. Harry’d sent back a picture of his car from the building he’d parked by, and the car wasn’t even mostly in the spot.

His flat is cozy and near campus, and he’s got a roommate, some bloke he met his first year in uni and plays Minecraft with on weeknights. Goes the pubs near campus and drinks awful warm beer, and he’s happy.

‘Course, he’s still Harry. He fumbles and drops the keys near the door, and his low, meandering voice half-lulls Niall into a stupor while he talks on the way up the stairs to his flat. Niall’s too busy watching his face anyway.

“So,” Harry says, when they’re standing in his kitchen with glasses of wine on the island between them. “Am I old enough now?”

“Jesus,” Niall murmurs, tracing his fingertip along the mouth of the glass. He half-expects it to sing like something from Miss Congeniality, but it stays quiet. Leaves answering up to him. He can feel Harry’s eyes fixed on him, and he shuffles a little uncomfortably. When he looks up, Harry’s looking at him the way he used to. The way that made Niall duck his head and look away with an inexplicable blush climbing up his throat.

He doesn’t look away now, though. He doesn’t think his luck is that good that Harry would love him like this not once, or twice, but three times.

“Yeah,” Niall says, “reckon so,” and Harry’s shoulders slump in relief.

He rounds the island to Niall as fast as he can, tripping over his own feet in his haste. “Would’ve been pretty embarrassing if you’d said no,” Harry admits, fitting his hands to Niall’s sides. He runs his palms up to his chest, his shoulders, down his arms.

Niall thumbs at the scar running through Harry’s eyebrow. “Feels like you’re sizing me up for a suit,” he mutters, and Harry laughs.

“Got to do the trousers as well, then,” Harry says, grabbing for his dick. “Ooh, wait,” he says. “We should take this back to my room. My roommate, he might be home soon.”

Harry’s room is in a bit of a tip, but it’s very Harry. Patterned shirts lie across pretty much every surface and he has so many pillows on his mattress that Niall turns to him, about to make a Princess and the Pea reference. Then he spots a canvas on the wall. “That looks…” Niall starts, stops.

“It is,” Harry says, without missing a beat. When Niall looks at him, he meets Niall’s eyes levelly, although Niall spots him swallow a bit nervously. “Everyone else, like. Knew me. He’s good about not knowing.”

“That’s okay,” Niall says, although Harry didn’t ask. Although Harry’s never needed his approval. “I’m happy. For you.”

One whole wall is covered in photographs some of which, Niall is surprised to find, are from the years Harry can’t remember. He’s got the picture of the five of them with Ronnie Wood, and the one Cal took of Harry and Niall near the Christ the Redeemer statue, and the picture Niall himself took of Harry holding the Eiffel Tower on the one day off they ever had in Paris. He has way more photographs of his new life, though – although Niall shouldn’t think of it like that, tries not to.

The whole time he was falling in love he wondered about it, though. Harry’s sweet smiling face holding his latest baked concoction in a Snapchat he’d sent to Niall, and, like. Maybe he never would’ve had the chance otherwise. Or maybe he always would have, so long as they weren’t holding on to each other so tight in the middle of the band.

Either way. He’ll never really know. And he has this.

He has Harry cupping Niall’s face in his hands and kissing him slowly, sweetly. He tastes like the wine they’d been drinking, like Niall’s own mouth. He tastes like Niall.

Harry studies Niall’s face when he pulls away, and it’s the face again, like he doesn’t know Niall. Niall knows that’s not the case now. “Did I know you were in love with me?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Niall admits, feeling like all the breath has been punched out of him. “I hope so.”

Abruptly Niall feels so impatient, like they’re moving too slow, they have too much to make up for, that he pushes Harry onto the bed and climbs on top of him before he reminds himself to slow down. He’s older, yeah, but he’s still – there are still five years gone, and popstar years, to boot.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Harry says dryly, his curls fanned out on the pillow beneath his head. He sounds so much like the Harry that Niall remembers that he blanches, but it is that Harry. And this Harry. And that they’re the same, really, Harry still trying to make Niall laugh with just the tips of his fingers zooming up Niall’s thighs and teasing at the waistband of his jeans.

“Funnily enough,” Niall smiles, leaning down to kiss him again, “this isn’t the first time you’ve said that to me.”


End file.
